Agriculture committee  It's volume-related and it's the extra cost of inflation.

Agriculture committee  The information piece has a number of components. Statistics Canada does estimates of total crop production by province with an extensive survey of producers, but I'm not sure whether I agree with Richard that the problem is they're surveying producers. They have a long lag time between when they do the survey and when that information is released, and part of the problem is that the information isn't current when it finally comes out.

Agriculture committee  I think we'd prefer a system where the economy dictated the flow of things, and the pull and push of the market forces would dictate how everything would work. Unfortunately, that's not the system we have. The railways really do not have the same competitive forces as other industries.

Agriculture committee  I think there's still a great deal of a learning curve to know how and whether interswitching will make a big difference. I think there probably would be some occasions where there's an interswitching point that will allow southern movement into the U.S. that might not have otherwise been as possible.

Agriculture committee  Picking up on Richard's last point, it's pretty easy to forecast what 2014-15 is going to look like, with 20 million to 25 million tonnes of carry-out, even given an average crop. So unless we have a huge drought evident, in June we're going to know that we're going to have a hell of a pile of grain to move.

Agriculture committee  I'm not sure whether Mr. Mongeau was talking about elevator capacity in the country or port terminal capacity. I would see the next bottleneck potentially being port terminal capacity, particularly in Vancouver. I think we need to know where that capacity is. We need to push the railways to get product there so we can see where we're at with port terminal capacity and then decide whether in the longer term we need to do some improvements.

Agriculture committee  There is one port that is owned or partially owned by Inland Terminals. That's Alliance Grain. I think they feel, as I believe, that considerably more capacity of grain can come forward in a coordinated fashion.

Agriculture committee  I'm sorry. No, I don't.

Agriculture committee  Well, he had better not be. If that's the maximum capacity, we're in serious trouble, especially if we're looking at all the ports and Thunder Bay opening soon, and we should be getting southern movement going as well. I think there is more capacity than that. We heard from grain handlers and the grain handlers union at Richard's conference earlier in the week.

Agriculture committee  I think it was touched on by everybody involved but I do agree with other presenters that it's hard to regulate every detail on every corridor and you go further and further down into a hole of trying to regulate everything. But maybe having some broad outlines would be good. If it's a million tonnes of wheat that's all going to move to Vancouver in an uncoordinated fashion, that's not going to serve the system really well, so perhaps there's a place for a few subsets, some nod to the fact that not all of our grain goes west.

Agriculture committee  I'm hesitant to speak for the entire group but I think there is probably some place for a coordinating agency for railcar allocation and for movement. At Richard's conference earlier this week, Perry Pellerin, who handles logistics for a number of the farmer-owned inland terminals, talked about a situation where there had been four ships at a port owned by a number of inland terminals and some private grain companies, Alliance Grain, that were only partially loaded, having had to move back out to anchor and then move back in because the railways weren't moving all of the cars in a timely manner.

Agriculture committee  Thanks very much. We really appreciate the opportunity to present the views of farmer-owned inland terminals. ITAC, the Inland Terminal Association of Canada, represents the interests of seven grain terminal companies in Saskatchewan and Alberta, companies that are at least 50% farmer owned.

Agriculture committee  ITAC members are handlers of Canadian Wheat Board grains, in fact, disproportionately so, because for a private terminal without international connections handling Canadian Wheat Board grains—and the Canadian Wheat Board was doing the marketing—you just get paid for handling. It was a good deal.

Agriculture committee  It's about communication and coordination. The railways claim that they're very modern and know where everything is happening. They don't seem to communicate when they have a problem. They don't seem to be able to coordinate things. A lot of it has to do with efficiency and getting things where they need to be on time.

Agriculture committee  I guess the position is that mandatory outward inspection should be removed. The Canadian Grain Commission should and could still have an accreditation role for any third-party inspections. If you have a country, let's say Brazil, and they decide that this customer in Brazil wants a certificate from some third party, and that's what they desire for the grain purchase, why do you mandate that the Canadian Grain Commission also must charge, under the new user fees, $1.60 per tonne, when that cost is much higher than what the private inspector will want and it's not desired by the purchaser?