Producer car shippers are mounting a lobbying campaign to save prairie rail sidings and switches.
Farmers who wants to ship their own rail cars need access to those sidings to set up trackside loading facilities.
But under the current rules, there’s nothing to prevent railways from tearing up sidings or spurs or dismantling the switches necessary to use them.
More than 200 farmers attending a producer car loading conference in Saskatoon last week said that’s not right.
They unanimously passed a resolution calling on Ottawa to give rural sidings and switches the same protection they would receive in urban areas under the government’s proposed new transportation policy.
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“This is an important issue,” said James Woodworth, an Elrose, Sask., farmer and spokesperson for the Prairie Producer Car Shippers Association. “The branch line is useless without the sidings and switches and other things that make it work.”
He said there have been instances in which farmers planning to set up producer car loading sites had their plans derailed when a railway unexpectedly dismantled the track infrastructure.
Under the federal government’s transportation policy now before Parliament, the railways would be required to give notice of their plans to abandon sidings and spurs in urban areas and to offer them for sale to local governments for net salvage value before removing them from service. The idea is to make the track available for commuter transit systems.
However no similar requirement is being placed on the rail companies for track in rural areas.
Woodworth said that’s not fair and western grain farmers should have the same protection as eastern commuters.
“We should have the same rights because on grain-dependent lines or rural lines, those sidings are every bit as important to us economically,” he said.
Paul Beingessner, a consultant who has dealt extensively with prairie rail issues, said sidings have been disappearing at an alarming rate over the last three or four years, often over the objections of local farmers.
The railways want to have as few stopping points as possible to maximize their own efficiencies and profits and that doesn’t mesh well with needs of producer car shippers.
“They’ve been quite anxious to close a number of sidings and in some cases that has been really detrimental to the whole producer car movement,” he said.
“The logic of the producer car is that you’re close enough to conveniently load the car from your own farm. That works for 10 or 15 miles, but if you have to truck 30 or 40, the financial incentive starts to disappear.”
Producer car shippers have powerful allies in their effort to save rail sidings and switches, including a coalition of western farm and commodity organizations and the Canadian Wheat Board.
Ian McCreary, chair of the CWB’s transportation committee, said the board and other groups will be taking that message to upcoming parliamentary committee hearings on the transportation bill C-26.
And he expressed confidence that Ottawa can be convinced to change the legislation.
“It’s so blatantly out of line,” he said. “It’s not consistent with the rest of the principles of the act and I think we’ve got a good shot at it.”
Beingessner thinks it will take a concerted effort to change Ottawa’s mind, noting that farmers have been talking to government about the issue for several years to no avail.
But now that Ottawa has given protection to urban lines, it would be hard-pressed not to give the same treatment to rural areas.
“I think that would look pretty bad,” he said.
