There was a good crowd on hand yesterday in Saskatoon for a Farmer Forum on Grain Transportation.

One of the keynote speakers was Murad Al-Katib, a member of the CTA Review Panel.

He says under the review they are looking at 800 pieces of legislation from  whats happening on the ground, to what’s happening on the water and in the air.

"We need to look at infrastructure bottle necks. We need to look at the ways that we're going to be financing that infrastructure, and this is all about understanding what the capacity is today, what do we need for the future, and how do we maintain and adequate amount of surge capacity to be able to prevent that type of situation from happening again. Information transparency is going to be a very key part of this."

He says we need to take a look at the grain car fleet, the locomotive capacity, and the need for very efficient and effective port capacity.

"I think there's a broad recognition that transportation policy and infrastructure actually plays a key role in the economic prosperity of Canadians, because we're an exporting nation and Canada relies on the ability to reach international markets, and transportation infrastructure and policy, that's key stuff."

He says efforts in the grain supply chain have cleared the grain backlog from 2013 and we’re back into normal or slightly lower carryout levels, adding we should be in pretty good shape to deal with the new crop coming up