Agriculture committee  Larry, with regard to the movement of grain, I think there has to be some identified formula that will allow the railways and the grain companies to identify what they want to ship. As I understand it right now, there's a breakdown in how they calculate the allocation of cars and what's being moved, how they're tracking that.

Agriculture committee  I look at the present legislation as a short-term solution. We have to start looking at longer term solutions. That's why I say, as a grain producer, I can identify the challenges on my farm, but certainly, on the challenges that the elevator companies are facing, I know some of them, but I don't know all of their business, and it's the same with the railroads, the same with the ports.

Agriculture committee  I'll give you a little story about interswitching. As a grain producer I do have friends in the elevator system, so I asked them about the interswitching. I think it's what I call a good threat to use to get the railways to consider giving better service, but in this particular instance, the person whom I talked to said they already have the ability for interswitching on certain loading sites.

Agriculture committee  The only thing I'd like to say on this is that in a truly commercial system, the whole value chain has to be responsible for their sector. In other words, just to use an example as a producer, if I sign a forward-pricing contract with a grain company, I'm responsible for delivery of that grain at a certain period of time, and they're responsible for the price that I've signed up for and to take delivery of it.

Agriculture committee  Before I could comment on that, I think we have to define what that service is. The act right now is pretty vague on what service is. Before we can answer that question, we have to define that. As a grain producer, and for any shipper who's involved in moving product by railway, that has to come first.

Agriculture committee  No, I believe in a commercial system, as little regulation as possible. I believe a commercial system will work. What we need right now, in my opinion, is transparency in the transportation system.

Agriculture committee  We have to have a tracking system so that we know where our cars are, and what grain has to be moved. We need good communication between the railroads and the shippers so that we can work this out. I firmly believe that we need to get all the players to sit around the table and work this out.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good evening to everybody. I appreciate your taking the time to listen to us this evening. I know it's been a long day, so I'll try to be as brief as I can. Thank you for inviting me here today to discuss the rail transportation issues on behalf of the Barley Council of Canada and the Western Barley Growers Association.

Agriculture committee  I'm certain it will open up value-added opportunities. I think we've missed a couple of opportunities in the malt industry in the last 10 years. We've watched two malt plants be built outside of western Canada when they were considering western Canada. There's a lot debate about why that happened, but we did lose those opportunities.

Agriculture committee  There's a lot to answer there.

Agriculture committee  On the role of the government as I see it, it's very important that we get these partnerships with our customers in the international marketplace. We're working on TPP and an agreement with Europe, and it's very important that we get trade agreements with these other countries because we are an exporting country and, especially in the part of the world I live in, we depend on export markets for a lot of what we produce.

Agriculture committee  Very much so.

Agriculture committee  I'd like to speak a little bit about when you talk about building the barley industry. Under the old monopoly system, the barley industry was not being represented very well. Just to reflect a little bit on it.... It will be very simplistic and very short. The domestic price of barley was definitely influenced by the prices quoted by the Canadian Wheat Board, and certainly back inland in western Canada, we weren't getting a true signal of world barley prices.

Agriculture committee  When I made my presentation, I didn't mean that the Canadian Grain Commission wouldn't be an alternative. If the buyer and seller agree to use the Grain Commission as their source of inspection to determine grade and the other parameters they want in the contracts being handled, that's fine, but the Western Barley Growers' position is that the Canadian Grain Commission should not be the only choice.

Agriculture committee  Certainly we have no problem with that concept.