The Farmer Rail Car Coalition may have lost its battle to buy the federal government’s grain cars, but the war of words between the coalition and Transport Canada shows no signs of abating.
FRCC president Sinclair Harrison said a senior Transport Canada official misled MPs attending a meeting of the House of Commons agriculture committee last month.
During the June 22 meeting, Helena Borges, director general of surface transportation policy, dismissed claims by FRCC officials that a secret report on rail cars and the revenue cap supported key elements of the FRCC’s business plan to buy the federal hopper cars and lease them to the railways.
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“I know you were told by the FRCC that the report was a validation of their business case,” she told MPs.
“That was not the case of that report.”
In an interview, Harrison said that if Borges is referring to an Oct. 28, 2005, report by Transport Canada designed to determine what would happen to the revenue cap under the FRCC plan, she is wrong.
“I have no idea why she would say that,” he said.
While he’s bound by a confidentiality agreement that prevents him from releasing details of the report, Harrison said there is no question it supports the coalition’s contention that its proposal to take over maintenance of the cars and lease them to railways would have resulted in a lower revenue cap and freight savings for producers.
The report demonstrated that taking maintenance payments to the railways out of the calculation would have produced savings that outweighed the additional costs of lease payments.
“The result of the report is that there would be a net reduction, just as we had said for years,” Harrison said.
In May the federal government killed a deal between the FRCC and the previous Liberal government to transfer approximately 12,000 grain hopper cars to the FRCC on a lease-to-buy basis.
Instead, it decided to retain ownership and pledged to reduce maintenance payments made to the railways under the cap.
Even though the coalition lost its bid to buy the cars, Harrison said he still wants Transport Canada to release the report to the public, something it has refused to do.
He said there is no legitimate reason to keep the report confidential, noting that even government MPs have called for its release.
“The standing committee on agriculture has called for this paper to be released and we see no reason why it shouldn’t be.”
Harrison said the only explanation he can think of is that Transport Canada doesn’t want to release information that will reflect well on the FRCC and poorly on the railways.
“It’s been an uphill battle all the way along with transport officials, and they seem to be very, very cautious about doing anything that has negative reflection on the railroads.”
He added it’s astounding that Transport Canada can simply ignore the request of elected MPs to release the report.
“Who’s the boss? Are transport officials telling the government what it can and cannot do?”
