The Farmer Rail Car Coalition has added another name to its membership roll.
Winter Cereals Canada becomes the 15th member of the coalition, which wants to buy the federal government’s fleet of 13,000 grain hopper cars.
Coalition chair Sinclair Harrison said the more members the coalition has, the better case it will be able to make to the federal government that it should get the hopper cars.
“With the broad based support we have received from producers, I am confident that the FRCC will obtain ownership of the federal hopper fleet on behalf of western Canadian farmers,” he said, adding that several other farm groups have also made inquiries about becoming part of the coalition.
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“I believe it’s safe to say that the coalition has the largest and most varied membership of any single-purpose farm organization in Western Canada.”
With the recent demise of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, there is now no major farm group opposing the coalition’s plans, a fact Harrison said should carry a lot of weight with federal officials.
Ottawa first announced its intention to sell the cars in 1996, and the coalition thought the issue would have been resolved long before now.
“We’re wondering, and I think farmers in the Prairies generally are scratching their heads, wondering why this can’t happen,’ said Harrison.
At a recent meeting in Ottawa with deputy minister of transport Louis Ranger and some departmental officials, Harrison asked that the issue be taken to the federal cabinet this summer. He also asked for a meeting or telephone conversation with transport minister David Collenette to make the same case.
“We want to get some sense of when this is going to happen,” he said.
“We have a budget to stick by and we’d like to get some guidance from the minister as to whether it will be three months or six months or a year.”
Coalition officials also met with federal solicitor general Wayne Easter in Saskatoon last week and, according to Harrison, received a sympathetic hearing from the the former president of the National Farmers Union, as well as a commitment to take up the issue with Collenette.
Harrison is confident the coalition is in a better position than any other prospective purchaser of the hoppers.
In its recent transportation blueprint, the government laid out three principles for the sale of the cars, saying they would go to a not-for-profit corporation with sound financial organization and open and transparent governance.
“We feel we fit the model the government has set out,” said the coalition chair. “That’s helpful but outside of that we still don’t know what the disposal process is going to look like.”
The other 14 members of the coalition are Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, Alberta Pulse Growers Association, Saskatchewan Pulse Growers Association, Manitoba Pulse Growers Association, Family Farm Foundation, Hudson Bay Route Association, Keystone Agricultural Producers, National Farmers Union, Prairie Producer Car Shippers Association, Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, Saskatchewan Canola Growers Association, Southern Rail Co-operative, West Central Road and Rail Ltd. and Wild Rose Agricultural Producers.
