After facing what he considered an ambush by the grain trade, Sinclair Harrison felt even more convinced that farmers need to own the federal rail car fleet.
“They just don’t want farmers involved in the transportation system,” said Harrison, after a panel discussion during a recent Fields On Wheels conference in Winnipeg.
“No matter what we say, what we put in front of them … it won’t be good enough for them.”
Harrison spoke during a panel discussion that was intended to be about curing bottlenecks in the grain transportation system. However, the discussion turned into a debate about the Farmer Rail Car Coalition bid to have farmers take control of the federal government’s 13,000 hopper car fleet.
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Harrison’s group was criticized by Wade Sobkowich of the Western Grain Elevator Association for its plan, which he said would distort the system and cause greater problems than now exist.
And Sobkowich suggested the FRCC might not represent farmers’ interests because a number of right-wing farm groups are not members and because non-farm groups are members.
“We question whether the bulk of FRCC’s membership, whether the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties, actually represents the grassroots intent of producers in Western Canada,” said Sobkowich.
Harrison was outraged and amused that opponents would suggest SARM and AAMDC don’t represent grassroots farmers, but he took the accusation as part of the grain industry’s attempt to stop farmers from taking control of a part of their business.
“Saying ‘put a hold on it’ is saying do nothing about it, and that’s what they want,” said Harrison.
“Where were these people for the last nine years?”
The coalition got strong support from farmer-director Ian McCreary of the Canadian Wheat Board, who ridiculed the railways’ claims of being more competent at managing rail cars than a farmer-controlled organization.
“Farmers have a longer term view of necessary infrastructure,” said McCreary.
“We’re not going to go throwing an asset away in the mid-’80s and come whining back to the public purse in 2004 saying ‘Oops,’ ” said McCreary.
“We’re here. We’ve invested in a land base. We spent billions of dollars. And there is good economic sense to tying the cars to the farmers.”
But Judie Dyck, the executive director of the Saskatchewan Canola Growers Association, said her organization left the coalition because it had too many unanswered questions.
