Canadian National Railway has scuttled Transport Canada’s attempt to organize a meeting with shippers over complaints about poor rail service.
The federal department had invited the rail company to a meeting in Ottawa on March 31 with officials from commodity shippers and terminal operators to discuss complaints about CN’s performance.
However the railway decided not to participate in the meeting, saying it prefers to deal with customer concerns on a one-to-one basis.
CN spokesperson Jim Feeny said the railway never considered that a meeting was scheduled because no agenda or time was set.
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“We have been awaiting information from Transport Canada on who the shippers are and what are the concerns they would like to address,” he said.
“We don’t have the information and therefore no meeting has been scheduled.”
Transport Canada spokesperson Cathy Cossaboon said the department was disappointed by CN’s decision. The department has decided to go ahead with a meeting involving just shippers.
She said Transport Canada may organize a one-on-one meeting with the railway later to discuss the situation.
“We’ll wait and see what comes out of this week’s meeting and bilateral meetings the railway says it plans to have with its customers as well.”
CN’s performance has been a growing concern among grain shippers in recent months, culminating in public criticism levelled by a senior grain company executive at a recent meeting in Saskatoon.
Shippers say they are unable to get enough cars to meet demand or co-ordinate shipments to port on CN lines, and say the railway is being outperformed by Canadian Pacific Railway.
Feeny defended CN’s performance, saying there is strong demand for rail transportation and there are bound to be complaints at times.
“It is not uncommon for concerns to come up during the course of a crop year and for those concerns to be dealt with in due course,” he said. “In that sense, this is a typical year.”
However, the head of the federal grain monitoring agency said CN is experiencing more than the normal performance issues.
“The majority of complaints have been levelled against CN,” said Mark Hemmes, noting that CN’s rail car turnaround time is four to six days longer than CP’s.
Bob Ballantyne, president of the Canadian Industrial Transport Association, said the 120 companies that make up the association are unhappy with CN’s performance and want the federal government to bring in legislation to give shippers more clout in disputes over rail service.
Two grain industry groups said they will attend – the Western Grain Elevators Association, which represents the major country and terminal grain handlers, and the Inland Terminal Association of Canada, which represents 13 farmer-owned independent facilities.
