SASKATOON – The referee has left the field.
Now it’s up to the players to write their own rules and call their own penalties.
On July 31, the lights were turned out for the last time at the Western Grain Transportation Office, bringing to an end more than 16 years of federal government involvement in the day-to-day business of the grain transportation system.
The WGTO, successor to the better-known Grain Transportation Agency, fell victim in last February’s federal budget to the government’s goal of creating a more commercial, market-oriented transportation system.
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Some of the tasks performed by the WGTO have been taken over by the Car Allocation Policy Group, an organization financed by the grain industry and made up of representatives from the railways, grain shippers and farmers.
The commercial grain sector generally favors the end of government involvement, although some shippers are more cautious than others about moving to a fully commercial system.
As for farm groups, there is the usual division of opinion. Some fear producers’ interests will not be as well looked after without an objective third party doling out cars and making sure rules are followed.
“We have always been a strong supporter of orderly marketing and we felt the GTA was an integral part of that,” said Terry Boehm of the National Farmers Union. “Farmers were well served by the GTA.”
But others are glad to see the government get out of the transportation business and hope CAPG will be just a short-term stopping point on the road to a fully commercial system. Paul Earl of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, is one who doesn’t mourn the GTA’s passing.
“It won’t be missed,” said Earl, who worked for the old GTA from its creation in 1979 until 1989. “It did not, except in very minor ways, fulfill its promise.”
When Hugh Horner was appointed Canada’s first grain transportation co-ordinator by transport minster Don Mazankowski 16 years ago, he said the GTA could be a catalyst, pushing for a more efficient transportation system.
The GTA immediately took over from the Canadian Wheat Board the job of allocating rail cars between the board and non-board sectors.
Other jobs as required
Over the years it took on other tasks. It negotiated new programs like pooling canola cars, using only hopper cars for west coast shipping and exchanging cars between the railways. As well, it conducted research on car turn-around times and the future of the port of Churchill. It produced monthly shipping plans and forecast long-range capacity needs and published statistics.
“It has had a positive influence on the grain transportation system,” said Richard Wansbutter, general manager of marketing and transportation for Saskatchewan Wheat Pool.
Wansbutter, who worked for the GTA from 1980-91, said the GTA’s role as an uninvolved third party was both its strength and its weakness.
Because it had no vested interest, it was seen as an objective and impartial arbiter in areas like allocating cars and promoting more efficient ways of doing things.
But its ability to make difficult decisions and act quickly was often hindered by the need to develop a consensus in the industry before taking action.
“When we were really struggling in terms of capacity constraints and needed to implement efficiency measures, the GTA couldn’t do anything because it didn’t have consensus and it couldn’t move without that,” he said.
Earl describes the GTA as “a great idea that was largely emasculated” by weak leadership from government and within the agency itself.
He said the agency was intended to be a catalyst to introduce efficiencies into the system. While it had some early successes, as the years went by it adopted a “don’t rock the boat” attitude.
If the agency had remained true to those roots, he said, it could have led the way in introducing the kinds of changes to the transportation system that are only now coming about.
“The GTA could have been at the centre of all this and played a very valuable role in terms of implementing these changes,” he said. “As it was, it was simply off to the side.”
Peter Thomson, who headed the GTA from 1988 until 1995, said the agency did the best job it could, given the rules and regulations that were in place.
Nevertheless, he thinks the agency’s demise was inevitable given the shift to a more market-oriented philosophy in both government and industry: “I think there was a lifespan to be lived. The industry wanted this.”
But Thomson added: “There are dangers in having the industry police itself.”
Bruce McFadden, acting co-ordinator during the last days of the GTA and WGTO, agrees it doesn’t make sense to have a third party arbiter like the GTA in a deregulated environment in which everything happens on a commercial contractual basis.
But the industry is not yet at that point, he said, adding “I don’t think anyone can say that will happen in one, two or five years, or ever.”
Wansbutter thinks the industry has matured enough that it no longer needs a third party to monitor and direct the transportation system.
Critics and defenders alike agree that much of the work done by the GTA, like port co-ordination and long-range planning, will still have to be done by the CAPG or some other industry body.
“Whether it’s done more efficiently, no one will ever be able to prove one way or the other,” said Thomson.
