A group that promotes the northern port at Churchill wants Canadian National Railway to change the way it ships grain to the northern Manitoba port.
The Hudson Bay Route Association said current routing makes no sense and costs farmers money.
The association wants the rail company to ship grain from the Birch Hills-Tisdale area in Saskatchewan east on its Tisdale subdivision to the town of Hudson Bay, Sask., and then north to The Pas, Man.
CN now moves Churchill-bound grain from that area south to Humboldt, Sask., then east to Canora, Sask., and north to The Pas, a much greater distance.
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At The Pas, the grain is switched to Omnitrax, which hauls it to Churchill.
While the Tisdale sub is officially in service, no commercial traffic moves on it and CN uses it mainly to store rail cars.
At its recent annual meeting, the association passed a resolution saying CN should be required to open the Tisdale line to traffic or sell it to an appropriate buyer.
Association president Arnold Grambo said the group has spoken to CN, but to no avail.
“They get paid by the mile and the (Tisdale sub) is much too short a distance to The Pas for their liking,” he said. “They’d rather haul it halfway round the world if they could and have farmers pay more freight.”
CN spokesperson Kelli Svendsen said CN’s route may be longer on the map, but it is the best alternative.
“This is the most efficient routing, given where the grain comes from and where it’s going.”
She said CN services northeastern Saskatchewan with crews based in Humboldt. Grain is gathered in that location and then shipped west or east depending on the destination. Grain bound for Churchill is gathered and shipped in that manner.
Svendsen said Tisdale to Hudson Bay is not the most efficient route.
“The most efficient is to bring it to Humboldt, where our crews are, then move it east and north,” she said. “Churchill grain comes from a wide area of Western Canada so it makes sense to move it all through Humboldt.”
She said the Tisdale sub is not out of service and the company has no plans to discontinue that portion of track.
“The line will remain part of our network for the foreseeable future.”
Grambo said the line is essentially a parking lot for CN, with farmers reporting 21-kilometre-long lines of empty rail cars.
“That’s very frustrating,” he said.
Svendsen acknowledged that the company uses the Tisdale sub to store cars when it has excess supply. It allows for easy access if demand increases in the area, she added.
Grambo said federal rules should be changed to prevent CN from sitting on a valuable piece of track and preventing others from using it.
“I think it should be expropriated and opened up for others to use.”
He said the issue could be resolved if a proposed highway from Nipawin, Sask., to The Pas was built, enabling grain to be trucked to Omnitrax.
“Then CN will have to compete for the grain and it would be in their best interests to open the line up,” he said.
