One after another, they strode to the witness table, swore to tell the truth and then did what prairie grain farmers have done for decades.
They complained about the railways.
More specifically, the dozen or so farmers who appeared before the Canadian Transportation Agency last week complained about the service they got from the railways in the winter of 1996-97.
Farmers like Patrick Hopkins of Dinsmore, Sask., who said he was unable to deliver a single bushel of grain to his local elevator from the beginning of January 1997 to the end of April.
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“Rail service last winter was the worst I have ever experienced,” he told the CTA panel hearing the Canadian Wheat Board’s complaint about railway performance in 1996-97.
Thousands lost
The grain shipping fiasco took $23,000 out of his pocket, he said, in trucking charges, carrying costs, additional grain handling and farm management costs, demurrage, taxes and accounting costs.
“This is a big price to pay for someone else’s mismanagement,” he said, adding he did everything he could to cope, as did the grain companies, truckers and the CWB.
“It appears to me that everyone involved did their part except the railways.”
All the stories were similar: rail cars nowhere in sight from November to April, plugged elevators, increased costs and reduced income for farmers, potash trains moving while grain got no service.
“I make no apologies for expecting good service from the railways,” said Lyle Wright of Kerrobert, Sask., who said he hauled malting barley in January, had it unloaded at Thunder Bay, Ont. at the end of March and got paid for it in mid-April.
“And I remind you there were no avalanches between Kerrobert and Thunder Bay.”
When grain boats are backed up, when sales are delayed or cancelled and when Canada’s reputation as a reliable supplier is damaged, he said, it’s farmers who pay.
And he told the CTA panel that farmers are depending on the agency to protect their interests.
“That’s why we’re here,” he said. “We hope you’re listening.”
Wayne Amos, who made the 51Ú2 drive from Oxbow, Sask., to appear, said it was worth the effort.
“I felt I had a personal story to tell, a story that needed to be told,” he said after testifying. And he expressed confidence the agency will give farmers a fair hearing.
“It has turned out to be a long, involved and complicated pro-cess, but I wouldn’t be here if I felt it wasn’t of some value.”
Amos told the panel he lost more than $12,000 because poor rail service made it impossible to market his lentils when prices were high in the winter. Instead he was forced to carry stocks all the way into summer, eventually selling in July for about three-quarters of the January price.
“This complaint is about accountability,” he said. “If the experience of the winter of 1997 has taught us anything, it is that we need to re-regulate, not deregulate, the system.”
Uncontrollable circumstances
Ian LaCouvee, of CP Rail, said in an interview that the railway doesn’t take issue with farmers’ complaints about lack of rail service.
“Yes, we had many service outages in many areas, but it was all due to to weather and to weather-related impacts like avalanches, rockslides and mudslides.”
LaCouvee said the railways will introduce evidence showing extreme cold and heavy snows on the Prairies and in the mountains made it impossible to provide anything close to normal service.
But one farmer who has seen a lot of Prairie winters pooh-poohed that excuse.
“The winters of ’47-’48 and ’55-’56, now those were bad winters,” 74-year old Walter Zunti told the panel. “1996-97 was not a bad winter.”
But 1996-97 did provide the worst rail service he’s ever seen in more than 50 years of farming near Luseland, Sask.
Resplendent in red suspenders and a blue-checkered shirt, Zunti said in an interview he doesn’t know if the CTA hearings will solve anything. Even if the railways are eventually forced to compensate farmers, they’ll just get it back through higher freight rates.
“Win or lose, we’re still going to pay in the end,” he said
But at the same time, Zunti said, the wheat board was right to launch the complaint.
“Something’s got to be done. You can’t win, but you can’t let everybody run right over you.”
