A shortage of money and staff is forcing the Canadian Grain Commission to cut back on services it has been providing to the grain industry, leaving grain shippers such as West Central Road and Rail frustrated and fuming.
Reg Gosselin, director of corporate services for the commission, said the funding squeeze has forced the commission to focus on services it is legally obligated to provide under the Canada Grain Act.
In other words, mandatory services such as inward inspection and weighing will continue, but non-mandatory services, including a special rail car grading program conducted for WCRR, will come to an end.
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“We’ve actually had to stop a lot of services that we were offering across the country simply because we don’t have enough funding to go around,” Gosselin said during a recent public meeting in Saskatoon that was part of a review of the commission and the grain act.
In an interview later, he said the commission has also cut back on analytical services at its grain research laboratory and sampling services in Eastern Canada.
“We’re shifting our resources to fulfil our mandatory responsibilities,” he said, adding the commission will continue to provide non-mandatory services if there is no other service provider available.
During the review meeting WCRR president Rob Lobdell had complained about the commission’s recent decision to cancel the composite grading program. It was devised as a way for a producer car shipper to mimic the blending that line elevator companies can do.
Last year the company worked out an arrangement with a receiving terminal in Vancouver, under which samples were taken from each rail car of a train shipped by WCRR, blended together and graded. That grade was then applied to the entire train load, providing a net financial benefit to producer car shippers who use WCRR’s services.
Last fall a formal contract was negotiated with the CGC to provide the service on a full cost-recovery basis. Then in March the commission unexpectedly told West Central the service would no longer be available in the new crop year beginning Aug. 1.
Lobdell said he suspects the contract was cancelled because other grain companies complained to the commission that the WCRR program was somehow unfair.
“There is no good reason to stop this,” he said. “It was in our interest, it was in producers’ interest and it was in the commission’s interest.”
However, Gosselin told the review meeting that the cancellation was part of the broader budget-driven decision to end non-mandatory services.
“WCRR is not the only party being affected by this,” he said. “We’ve had to tell many clients we have to cease providing a service because we have to shift those funds into other services that are mandated by our legislation.”
He acknowledged that WCRR paid the full cost of the program, but said it was a matter of staffing.
“The reality is we only have a certain amount of staff and we have to use the money we have to pay for mandatory services.”
He added that while the commission hasn’t yet had to refuse to provide mandatory services, it has told the industry that could happen in certain circumstances if the funding issue isn’t resolved. For example, if the commission was asked to put on a third shift of inspectors at the grain terminal in Prince Rupert, B.C., it would have a hard time doing so.
