CN Rail Executive Vice President Sean Finn met with Saskatchewan’s farm group leaders this week in an open discussion on issues surrounding grain transportation.

Todd Lewis, President of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, says it was important to have an open conversation about the issues with grain transportation in the fall and winter.

"They're getting more cars spotted and in a position now to hall grain which has happened before when the weather warms up, they do perform better," he said. "I think that's understood and recognized, but their way behind. It's going to take months to clean this mess up to put it quite bluntly. We are still paying lots in emerge cost at the coast and grain isn't in the right place at the right time, and it's affecting our customer base."

Lewis adds he sees this as an opportunity to work on ideas that could help ensure something like this does not happen again.

"The new legislation talks about some planning provisions that should help but spent a lot of time talking about a common data set," he said. "I think we need one number all parties can agree too, so we are all singing from the same hymn book so to speak. If there are issues that it can recognize earlier that we don't have competing numbers in one group saying is the service as bad as this set of numbers is showing."

Along with APAS, representatives from Saskatchewan’s commodity boards were on hand for Tuesday’s meeting in Regina.