Commercial commodity shippers think farmers are the spoiled brats in the rail system, a sulfur shipper told the Canadian Transportation Agency hearing in Saskatoon.
Commercial shippers have to yell and holler to make sure they get fair treatment, said former Sultran executive Kevin Doyle.
“The parliamentarians are looking after grain,” said Boyle in an interview about industry perceptions of how grain was treated in the winter of 1996-97.
“We’ve got to go and fight for ourselves.”
Boyle and potash executive Jack McMunn were put on the stand to testify that they didn’t think grain was discriminated against that winter.
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The Canadian Wheat Board has complained that grain was pushed behind other commodities when the railways faced train rationing.
The board said this cost farmers about $50 million and it wants the CTA to order CP Rail to treat grain fairly. The board settled its complaint with Canadian National earlier in the hearing.
Boyle said sulfur shipments were badly delayed by winter avalanches and blizzards in 1996-97: “We were very unhappy.”
But they rescheduled deliveries to port and kept customers abreast of developments, he said. And sulfur shippers couldn’t really blame the transporter because “the railways were under siege.”
McMunn said officers in his company were infuriated by the long delays in getting potash to port, but they also didn’t blame the railways because “they were going through hell out there.”
Boyle said he doesn’t believe any type of commodity received special treatment. Trains were moved as they could be, and until the backlog was cleared, everyone had trains tied up in the mountains.
Boyle said he repeatedly called CP officials to try to get sulfur trains through and said commodities fought with each other to get through first.
“The sulfur people I know in the railway would be fighting with the coal people and the other people because everyone wanted something to happen,” said Boyle. “Every day we fought for a priority.”
But he said CP just moved trains through as the tracks opened up and didn’t favor him or any other shipper.
“I would have given my eyeteeth for a priority,” he said.
McMunn said he didn’t know if grain was discriminated against. “I never even thought about it.”
Boyle said other commodity shippers noticed when grain shipment delays were raised in the House of Commons in early 1997.
“Those of us on a commercial side always feel that grain’s always got the government to look after it,” he said in an interview.
