Saskatchewan municipalities want Ottawa to force grain companies to offer elevators for sale before they demolish them.
At a meeting last week in Regina, the rural and urban municipalities associations had hoped to discuss ways community groups could purchase the facilities.
However, none of the six invited grain companies showed up.
That prompted the call for a mandatory sale procedure similar to that followed by the railways, where interested parties would have time to consider buying an elevator slated for closure.
“We feel that it is in legislation, federally, that the elevators are there for the general advantage of Canada, just like the railroads, and that they should be put into a discontinuance process,” said Sinclair Harrison, president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities.
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federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
Rural municipalities want the elevators kept open to keep more grain on rail and off municipal roads. Urban municipalities say they need the property tax revenue.
Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, Cargill, United Grain Growers, Pioneer, Patterson and Parrish and Heimbecker were invited to the meeting.
“I guess everybody can draw their own conclusions by them not showing up here,” Harrison said. “But it appears that they’re not for sale because they didn’t indicate otherwise.”
Pool vice-president Marvin Wiens said the company didn’t go to the meeting because it had met municipal representatives earlier in the week.
Wiens said the company already goes through a lengthy public consultation process, including a year’s notice to close an elevator. He said he would be surprised if Ottawa enacted a mandatory process.
“To argue that there needs to be a legislated process in place just will not work because you have to get agreement by both the grain companies and the local communities that there is a reasonable alternate use for that facility before it’s left over the long term,” he said.
“Can you ask a company to invest major dollars in new facilities in this province and then legislate that company to transfer their facilities free to a competitor?”
Wiens said the pool is willing to talk to any communities about alternative uses for facilities, such as seed cleaning plants.
Brian Hayward, chief executive officer of United Grain Growers, said the company has sold elevators in the past.
“Oftentimes they get moved off track and they get moved to farmyards and used for storage purposes,” he said. “We’ve converted some places into malt barley houses.”
He said UGG is not in favor of a highly regulated process for closures because that would impose more costs on grain companies.
“I think maybe there’s a bit of a misunderstanding that somehow or other we just sort of go out … in the cover of darkness and knock these things down. If there’s some kind of arrangement that seems to make sense for all parties, then we’d look at it.”
