The Canadian Canola Growers Association has filed a level of service complaint with the Canadian Transportation Agency over how the railways moved grain and oilseeds this winter.
“We think we have some compelling evidence that shows the railways didn’t perform up to snuff. We definitely hope we can get better service in the future,” said association president Brett Halstead, a farmer from Nokomis, Sask.
The association filed the level of service complaint with the CTA May 26 and hopes to have a ruling on the railways’ service by September.
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Under the Canada Transportation Act, the railways must provide “adequate and suitable” accommodation for all traffic presented for carriage.
Rick White, chief executive officer of the canola growers association, said there was a problem all shipping season with rail service, and it cost farmers an estimated $1 billion in lost sales, disgruntled customers, lower prices and wide basis.
“All of these costs come back to the farmer, and it is an exorbitant cost farmers are absorbing right now. It’s such a massive problem,” said White.
“It is a horrendous amount of money and lost opportunity that farmers have incurred, and this problem is not going away.”
The association provided input into the federal government’s new legislation forcing railways to meet minimum grain handling targets, but White hopes this is one more stick to force improved service.
“We looked at that and saw there was an opportunity to go at this a different way using existing legislation and go for a longer term fix,” said White.
With an estimated 22 to 23 million tonnes of carryover from last year, White said the grain handling system will be plugged when crop comes off this fall unless railways are forced to change how they move grain.
“Even an average crop coming off in the fall, coupled with that kind of carryover, we are going to have a plugged system again. We have to fix this, and the fix is the railways have to bring on more capacity.”
White said the best case scenario would be that the CTA determines the railways did not meet their service obligations and forces them to increase their capacity to fulfill their obligations by ordering more locomotives, hiring more crews or building more infrastructure.
“What we were looking for desperately is a longer-term fix, something that will compel the railways to look at the demand and meet the demand of the future as opposed to relying on historical five year averages and saying that is good enough.”
