THIS is a bit of dark humour, Ottawa style. It is said that when a new cabinet is sworn in and ministers head for intense briefings to get a feel for the complexity of the issues in their new job, two of the newly minted ministers go to medical clinics.
There, the ministers responsible for the RCMP and Transport Canada have chips inserted in their heads that lead them to recite the mantras: “RCMP good, critics bad” or “Railways good, critics bad.”
For months now, prairie critics of the railways (the line forms on the right, in the centre and on the left) have begun to suspect that Conservative transport minister Lawrence Cannon had succumbed to the transplant.
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Shippers, including grain growers, elevator companies and the Canadian Wheat Board, had shown up in Ottawa soon after the Conservatives were elected as prairie populists with their usual list of complaints about railway performance.
They even negotiated a deal with Transport Canada officials May 5, 2006 that included stronger shipper protections within legislation and launch of an official government review of performance by the railway wolves.
Then came the silence of the lambs.
Once again, the wolves seemed to be winning as Cannon, a West Quebec MP with a mandate to win more Quebec seats for the Conservatives, was silent on the deal. Whispers grew – don’t you know that CN head offices are in Montreal?
So shippers were surprised last week when Cannon produced proposed amendments that, if not a shippers’ bill of rights, at least was strong enough to have the CWB and Western Canadian Wheat Growers pulling on the same oar while the railways protested and sulked.
Final offer arbitration for shipper coalitions, more railway accountability on producer car loading sites and a promise of a level-of-service review once the legislation is approved were part of the package.
Shippers were happy. Another western grievance had been addressed.
Now comes the interesting part.
Parliament rises this month until September. Even if an election does not happen this autumn, it is always a possibility in a minority Parliament. In the meantime, the railways will bring their lobbying power to bear on MPs to delay or amend and then lobby senators to amend or kill Bill C-58 as it makes its way through Parliament.
CWB manager of commercial rail, Jacqueline Cassel-Vernon, made a good point June 4 when she encouraged farmers to investigate the proposed changes and if they see merit, to contact their MP and local senators to demand action.
The fate of these shipper-friendly proposals depends on whether they make it through Parliament before the government falls and all bills die.
A litmus test for the Conservatives on whether these are serious proposals or mere window-dressing is whether they make this bill a priority to get through the Commons.
Then it is over to the Liberals, who did little on this file when in power but now would have the ability to quickly get it through the Liberal-dominated Senate.
Of course, with Senate benches filled by business-connected Liberal appointments, railway arguments to amend, delay or defeat may resonate.
Message to politicians: the world, or at least prairie interest, is watching.
