Finance committee  We are very familiar with the Canadian agriculture policy that's being developed right now. One of our main focuses with a program like that.... Canadian agriculture is some of the most sustainable agriculture in the world. It's very important for us, when we talk about Canadian agriculture, to continually focus on the concept of needing to increase our productivity because the world needs Canadian products.

Finance committee  It's tough, as I'm not sure whether that means direct payment to a producer. Ultimately, a lot of our members are not interested in just getting a cheque in the mail for the production. They want to see investments into innovation, into crop varieties and into the things that can deliver those results, as opposed to getting a cheque in the mail to do that kind of thing.

Finance committee  We sell into an open market, so when you see grain movement each year, it's very cyclical. You have a program, but each week, depending on the crop and when the crop comes off, you may have different variations in what you need. Then you absolutely need some flexibility in the week to say that you're not going to put this much pressure on the system, but you are going to need it in the future.

Finance committee  That's true to some extent, but a lot of it is based on the contracting arrangement and on what certain other countries are doing. When a railway says things like that, what they would like to see is for grain movement each week to be even all the way through, but the reality is that customers should dictate.

Finance committee  Absolutely, because ultimately you're targeting your vessel, so it's going to be peaky. When you have a vessel and you're not getting the rail service you need, you're paying to merge on that vessel. Ultimately, it's the farmer who bears that cost, so that's ultimately our main issue.

Finance committee  Yes, it's very fair to say. That's why extended interswitching in particular is a very easy way to drive competitive prices.

Finance committee  The grain sector has a program called the ag transport coalition. It's been running for close to 10 years now. Within the grain sector, how this system works is that we order railcars each week for the amount of grain we need to move each week. Grain companies will set a sales program for the entire year based on what they expect the rail capacity to be.

Finance committee  Yes, they'll put in an order each week for the number of cars that they want to see delivered to them each week.

Finance committee  The railway companies and the grain companies have communicated very early in the year to say, “This is what our sales program will be.” We are able to predict what the crop size could be, obviously with variation.

Finance committee  During the pandemic, we saw prices increase for inputs, as far as getting them into Canada went, due to supply chains. Anything from tractor tires to fertilizer.... Anything that required an integrated supply chain coming from overseas had a massive supply chain issue. From our perspective, container traffic and anything to do with shipping was also a major issue for us, such as getting shipping containers, because we ship a lot of our product in containers.

Finance committee  Yes, absolutely. Our organization has two streams of work. One is creating efficiencies, which really comes down to cost. It comes down to how we make sure that our producers can produce at the lowest cost possible and have as many export markets as possible as well, and have the supply chain there to do it.

Finance committee  For grain crops particularly, we have a whole system built that's based on elevators and on using the rail system to move the grain to ports. Compared to other countries, we have some of the longest hauls moving that grain in the world. Our competitiveness, the predictability and the efficiency that we can achieve on the rail system, particularly in making sure we can make that haul and make it effective, is really important.

Finance committee  These are very important loans for the sector. We have providers throughout western and eastern Canada, obviously, who use those advance payment programs. When you're managing the risk that is agriculture and the biological system that.... We look at Alberta right now, where there's a moisture deficit in some areas.

Finance committee  Thank you. That's quite the platform. I appreciate that. Pulses have a built-in advantage in that we don't have to use nitrogen fertilizer. The pulse crop pulls the nitrogen from the soil, so we don't have to use nitrogen fertilizer. There's a massive.... The numbers I cited are literally because we are not applying nitrogen fertilizer.

Finance committee  Thanks for the question. Throughout COVID, particularly with the amount of fertilizer we import from Russia and Ukraine, there was a large disruption and a lot of worry within the sector around having enough nitrogen to grow a crop. The focus for the sector, at the time, was to try to ensure that the funds—the extra tariffs—would go into supporting farmers in the future, as far as being able to ensure they have the crop nutrients they need.