Rail service | Grower groups urge government to maintain mandatory grain hauling requirement
General farm organizations in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta say Ottawa should extend a federal order requiring Canada’s major railway companies to move a million tonnes of grain per week.
Leaders from Keystone Agricultural Producers in Manitoba, the Alberta Federation of Agriculture and the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan say Ottawa’s million-tonne-per-week minimums should remain in place at least until spring.
The producer groups say grain movements should continue to be regulated, at least for the time being, to ensure that a repeat of last winter’s grain transportation backlogs does not occur.
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“We’ve got 70 million tonnes of grain that are marketable this year and that’s 10 million tonnes above average,” said APAS president Norm Hall.
“Let’s leave (the federal order) in place. Let’s get the grain moved. If we don’t need (the order) later on, then we can remove it, but let’s leave it where it is, at least for the time being.”
In Manitoba, meetings facilitated by KAP produced a similar sentiment.
KAP board member Chuck Fossay said most of Manitoba’s farm organizations that attended a recent meeting with the Canadian Transportation Agency felt the minimums should remain in place, at least for now.
“Everybody that was in attendance at the meeting, except for the Western Canadian Wheat Growers, all wanted to maintain the minimum number or cars … at least until the spring,” Fossay said.
“We didn’t have the bumper crop that we had last year, but between the crop we grew and the amount of grain that we carried over from last year, we still have a lot of grain that needs to be moved,” he added.
“We really felt that we needed to have a guarantee in place to ensure that the railroads continue to move the grain in a timely fashion.”
AFA president Lynn Jacobson said in an email that recent consultations involving the AFA, provincial commodity groups and the Battle River Railway produced a similar outcome.
“(The) majority of the groups wanted to retain some minimum tonnage level and penalty as we don’t have leverage with the railroads,” Jacobson said in the email.
“We all want to move to a contract system where penalties can be imposed.”
Debate over rail service and Ottawa’s role in regulating it has become more vocal in recent weeks.
Ottawa passed an order earlier this year forcing Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway to move a million tonnes of grain per week or face fines as high as $100,000 per incident for non-compliance.
The federal order is due to expire later this month unless Ottawa extends it.
