The prairie grain hauling system is within a few years of breaking down unless governments intervene more decisively to rebuild and preserve roads, says the new Reform party transportation spokesperson in Parliament.
Lee Morrison, re-elected MP from the huge Cypress Hills-Grasslands riding that takes in most of southwest Saskatchewan, said the answer lies in paying more attention to the road system and in rewriting the rules governing grain handling performance.
“We are losing the railways. It is practically a done deal,” Morrison said June 20 after being named to the Reform party shadow cabinet in Parliament. “I see a real mess in three or four years if we don’t come up with some answers.”
Read Also
Canola oil transloading facility opens
DP World just opened its new canola oil transload facility at the Port of Vancouver. It can ship one million tonnes of the commodity per year.
He said western Canadian commodity producers are losing faith in the transportation system to get their goods to market. He talked about the collapse of the system.
“We are losing our railways and the highways are crumbling to dust,” he said. “People are getting more than a little worried about how we will move our products around if we don’t have any way to move them. This is on the top of my priority list.”
Morrison said investing more money in the national and provincial road system likely is the best solution, although he is soliciting opinions and advice “from anyone and everyone” on what can be done.
The second-term MP also said he will be pressuring transport minister David Collenette to insert some long-discussed “rewards and penalties” powers into the Canada Transportation Act to force improvements in the performance of the railways, grain companies and other players in the grain transportation chain.
Morrison said he has doubts about the viability of short-line railways as an alternative to branch line abandonments. He blamed the grain companies.
“I am not a great enthusiast over short lines because the grain companies are ensuring we will not have short lines,” he said. “The grain companies are shutting down their smaller elevators. They all want to have concrete on the main lines so we have to figure out a way to get the grain to those terminals.”
The MP’s call for greater attention to road rebuilding came the same week that the Canadian Automobile Association renewed its call for stable funding for the national highway system.
“It is an issue important to business, to road users and to our economy,” CAA president Brian Hunt wrote to federal and provincial ministers last week before they met in Toronto for a closed meeting. “CAA seeks a national highway policy, complete with a strategic plan and long-term funding.”
Morrison said for prairie farmers, the issue is broader than the national system of main highways. It also involves the grid roads farmers use to get to main highways.
As an MP for the large rural Saskatchewan riding, he said he is in a good position to highlight the problem.
“I have the worst transportation problem in the Dominion of Canada in my riding,” he said. “I have one-quarter of the settled area of Saskatchewan and this is where most of the abandonments are going to take place. This is where the roads are in the worst condition and where distances people have to move stuff is the greatest.”
