With English Bay looking more and more like a parking lot for grain ships, the political heat in the grain transportation crisis was turned up another notch last week.
The railways’ performance in hauling grain became an issue in the House of Commons, with opposition members demanding that the government do something to get grain moving.
Federal agriculture minister Ralph Goodale said he’s not satisfied with the railways’ argument that the slowdown in grain movement is due to bad weather, adding the railways have an obligation to move grain to market.
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“Grain is the single largest volume and dollar contributor to (their) bottom line,” he told reporters outside the House. “It seems to me a customer that big and that important should receive high priority attention.”
On Feb. 7 there were 38 vessels waiting for grain at the West Coast, with 28 of them sitting at anchor in Vancouver’s English Bay and another 10 waiting at Prince Rupert. One ship had been waiting 36 days. Another seven vessels were due to arrive this week.
The demurrage bill for this crop year is estimated to be near $15 million, and the Canadian Wheat Board says farmers are losing hundreds of million of dollars from deferred and lost sales.
Frustration over the lack of rail cars arriving at port continued to grow among farmers, grain shippers and overseas customers.
“I’m not sure I have the adjectives to describe how desperate the situation is,” said Richard Wansbutter, general manager of marketing and transportation for Saskatchewan Wheat Pool.
There have always been slow periods in grain movement due to weather or specific operational problems, but the system has always been able to recover and make up the lost ground.
“Now I’m not sure if we have that capability,” he said, adding that grain is having difficulty competing with other bulk commodities for the limited capacity on main lines through the mountains.
Meanwhile, the heads of the two national railways released letters defending their performance.
Paul Tellier, president and chief executive officer of CN Rail, said shipments of CWB grain to export position are ahead of last year.
The railways had to deal with a number of problems, he said, including a late harvest, the mix of grain shipped to Prince Rupert, new car allocation procedures, slow deliveries by producers and bad weather.
“It would be unfair and unbalanced to portray the problems as entirely the fault of CN Rail,” he said.
Working with wheat board
R. J. Ritchie, president of CP Rail, said the railway has leased 80 locomotives to try to clear the grain backlog and is working with the wheat board on a program to encourage farmers to deliver grain to big terminals on the main lines.
Andy Sears, transportation manager for Sask Pool, said that sounds good in theory, but the pool doesn’t want farmers in low density areas to be left without rail service.
Ritchie also said government policies have discouraged railways from investing in new equipment that would increase capacity.
Some farm leaders say the situation may also reflect the fact that the railways are no longer subject to any monitoring or control, as they were under the Western Grain Transportation Act and the Grain Transportation Agency.
“This could be deregulation coming home to roost,” said John Clair, chair of the CWB’s producer advisory committee.
