KAP president encouraged by northern railway investment

Keystone Agricultural Producers (KAP) President Bill Campbell is encouraged by a federal-provincial partnership that will see up $147.6 million invested into the Arctic Gateway Group, which owns and operates the Hudson Bay Railway.

The Arctic Gateway Group is a partnership between 41 First Nation and Bayline communities. 

"It's encouraging to see the provincial and federal governments working together to ensure critical infrastructure. We need all the options that are available to us as far as agriculture to ensure that our products are deliverable to export markets," said Campbell. "There has been limited use of that particular railway in the last little while but this investment should help ensure that the agricultural products from northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan have an efficient and effective way to deliver their products to marketplace."

Campbell commented on grain movement so far this year.

"I think for the most part it has been moving relatively effective and there's been marketing throughout the year because of the higher commodity prices from Christmas time on. We also need to understand that there was very limited production last year. There has not been that strain on the transportation system. When we look at some of the problems that happened on the west coast with the flooding and some of those parts, when there was downtime in the railway system. We were able to cope with that because of our limited production. There are still some production challenges in western Canada but I would hope that we have more production this year than last year and so we may test the transportation system and the export system a little more this year than last year."