OTTAWA – The farmer coalition trying to buy the government’s grain hopper car fleet lost one of its members last week in a dispute over tactics and ideology.
The Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association decided to bail out of the farmer rail car coalition, citing a loss of faith in the project and political disagreements with other members.
Remaining coalition members met June 12 to assess the impact and decided it would be business as usual.
Spokesperson Sinclair Harrison of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities insisted the coalition’s position is not weakened.
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“The position we took is that it is not the withdrawal of producer desire, just of one organization,” he said from Regina. “We still feel 90 to 95 percent of producers have an interest in buying the cars.”
But in Ottawa, one government MP who supports the farmer project said the withdrawal of the conservative wheat growers from what has been an ideologically diverse group will undermine the cause.
“I think producers still want a say in this,” said southern Saskatchewan MP Bernie Collins. “But sure this undermines the effort. The wider the cross-section you have, the better.”
That ideological expanse between original coalition members, best illustrated by the distance between the wheat growers and the National Farmers Union, was noted in Ottawa by MPs impressed that this showed car ownership is a goal supported by farmers across the spectrum.
In the end, said wheat growers president Larry Maguire, the gap was simply too great.
Increasingly, the wheat growers organization concluded car ownership would not give farmers bargaining power in the system. An agreement with the railways still would be needed and farmers would not control the allocation system.
Meanwhile, farmer groups borrowing to buy the cars could be left with a large debt because the government-legislated 75-cent-per-tonne levy to pay for the cars will provide too little revenue.
“Our view is that owning the rail cars will not solve the problems that we once thought it would,” Maguire said in an interview from his Manitoba farm.
New focus
Instead, the wheat growers’ lobby will concentrate its energies working within a new Prairie Farm Commodity Coalition which is preparing a position paper that will stress deregulation, efficiency and a dual grain marketing system as the best way to help farmers.
“What is really needed is farmer access to cars and ownership won’t necessarily make that meaningful,” said Maguire.
He said the wheat growers had grown increasingly uneasy inside the car ownership coalition because other members did not agree with their support for “a market driven and commercial system.” He said some coalition members want cars to be used for “social purposes” such as keeping small elevators and branch lines operating.
Meanwhile, back inside the now-diminished farmer coalition, Harrison said work continues.
They met last week with the government’s financial consultants who will recommend terms and conditions for the sale.
