Finance committee  The program, the way it is, is good with the way it can be processed and how quickly it can flow through to the producers. The AgriRecovery component should be totally separate from the AgriStability component, and that's what we're recommending.

Finance committee  Thank you for the question, Kelly. Yes, there is something that could be done, and I would hope that the committee could help us in this, and that is in the regulatory regime of municipal infrastructure and the work we do. We are bound by regulatory bodies both federally and provincially, but federally we have, under Transport Canada, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, and we have the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It is indeed a pleasure for me to be here today. I want to take this opportunity to thank the standing committee for inviting us here to share our federal budget priorities with you today. SARM represents all 296 rural municipalities in Saskatchewan and acts as the common voice of rural Saskatchewan.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I've been talking quite a bit this afternoon. I apologize. I guess you can tell we're very passionate about our railways and keeping them, and keeping the traffic where it should be, on rail and off our roads. We would like to leave it that.... As a short-line operator, I think there are things that the federal government could do and should do to assist rail transportation, to assist producers, not just in producer cars but in the grain industry.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. The only one I can speak to with experience, after operating a short line, is level of service. We have seen in the past in Saskatchewan that if branch lines were under CP or CN rule, regardless of which one, and a producer car loading site on one of those lines ordered cars, the class one railways would say, “We won't bring them to you because it costs us too much to get them there.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, if I could add to that, we have to be very clear on this. A producer car siding is an allocation of that siding. It is not the siding itself. It's an allocation of it. Once you remove that allocation, you will never get it back, and then you've removed the competition on that siding.

Agriculture committee  As far as we know, CP has not put any sidings or producer car allocation sites on the list for delisting.

Agriculture committee  The only costs I can see that CN or the railway could defend on a producer car allocation is if that siding was not used for anything else--if no other industry player or grain company was using that siding. If a siding is a half a mile or a mile long and there's a grain terminal on it, then the grain terminal is using that siding.

Agriculture committee  That's right. But they would say the siding was not being used for any purpose whatsoever, and they'd have to maintain the switches and pay tax on the siding.

Agriculture committee  I'll try on this one. The rules as we understand them are that they just have to advertise that they're going to close the sites and give 60 days' notice. There is no recourse, as we take it, to change that. You can make your complaint, but we don't even know where that would get you, and that's our concern.

Agriculture committee  I have to honestly say this is the first that I am aware of.

Agriculture committee  I think the first thing that has to be done, as I said in my presentation, is that the definition of “railway” has to be redefined and sidings have to be part of that definition. That is key.

Agriculture committee  I'll try from what we understand. Just to provide a little more background to my position, I'm also president of a short-line rail. Our municipalities own our own railway and are very successful. Our understanding of this issue of the de-listing of producer car sites is that the railways only have to give 60 days' notice in any local media they deem fit.

Agriculture committee  That is key because the railway can come along at their discretion and, as a business decision that they made, and with no notification, tear out a siding. With no notification they can do that. They do have to if it goes through an urban setting, but they don't have to if it's a rural setting.

Agriculture committee  No.