A tide of cautious hope for reconciliation is washing through the grain transportation system after a year of fighting.
“I think communication is the best thing to solve a problem,” John Corey, a dispute resolution specialist with the Canadian Transportation Agency, told the Fields on Wheels conference Dec. 3.
“If your car is late for a day or a week, calling the railway and asking what’s going on, or better yet, getting a call from the railway telling you that it’s not going to come at certain times, goes a long way towards alleviating the tensions between the parties.”
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That view was echoed a number of times at both Fields on Wheels, a yearly University of Manitoba Transport Institute grain logistics conference in Winnipeg, and at Informa Economics’ Canadian Agriculture and Food Outlook conference in Calgary Dec. 5.
Industry players said the various parts of the complicated grain transportation system need to work together because disputes, penalties and regulatory intervention are blunt instruments that often have unintended consequences.
Farmers said a particular problem is how producer car deliveries were sideswiped by the railway response to minimum grain shipping targets.
Paul Miller, a railway consultant, University of Alberta professor and former Canadian National Railway vice-president who spoke at both conferences, urged shippers to work with railways to improve performance because overhauling the system can’t be done easily or cheaply.
“The best thing we can do is work more closely together, have much better communication about when things are going wrong, in advance, what can we do together to innovate up and down the supply chain.”
Farmers, grain companies and other industries were exasperated in the winter of 2013-14 by apparently poor railway service and the seemingly casual railway response to the crisis. The federal government eventually responded with new regulations and penalties.
Bryan Richards, president of Regina’s Global Transportation Hub Authority, said the industry is being forced to try to co-operate.
“It’s critical,” he told the Informa conference.
“Many frayed nerves, if not open hostility, occurred over the past several months. I think everyone’s getting into the realm of working together.”
Speakers at both conferences talked about the complications that are involved in railways being investor-owned companies but also having a responsibility to society. An array of industry players, including railroaders, accepted the notion that railways need to go beyond looking out for shareholder interests.
“We definitely have a social role to play,” CN vice-president Jean-Jacques Ruest said at Fields on Wheels.
“I think people can find more common ground when they meet face-to-face as opposed to talk through the newspaper. I think we need to get down to the basics of what needs to be done and what can be done.”
Freight Management Association of Canada president Bob Ballantyne told the Informa conference that shippers are glad to have regulatory measures that can be used against the railways in case performance is poor.
However, he hopes official complaints and disputes won’t be needed if railways understand their dual natures as public and private companies and develop a more collegial relationship with customers.
“There is a lot of distrust that has developed over a lot of years, a lot of decades in fact, and it’s not in anybody’s interest for this to continue,” said Ballantyne.
ed.white@producer.com
