A review of the grain handling and transportation system already has started, even though the public phase of the exercise has not been launched, federal transport minister David Collenette said last week.
The government is wondering whether the public phase can begin before the Canadian Transportation Agency completes its hearing next spring into complaints against the railways from the Canadian Wheat Board.
“The question is, can we work it out so we can do both, given the fact that the CTA hearing … is now not going to start until March or April,” Collenette said in an interview.
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He said the government is trying to carry out a review without affecting the CTA hearings.
Review under way
During a week in which he faced pressure from federal and provincial politicians and grain industry leaders to get the promised review started, Collenette said it already has started.
Close to 40 submissions on the issue of the end of the freight rate cap and alternative regulations have been received and are being studied.
Bureaucrats are working on proposed terms of reference for the inquiry, promised for 1999 but being moved ahead at the request of the industry. And names of potential review commissioners are being considered.
Earlier in the Commons, Collenette told Brandon-Souris, Man. Conservative MP Rick Borotsik that “preparatory work” is under way. “We are working toward an early start.”
Earlier in the week, the transport minister met with leaders from the three prairie wheat pools and they urged him to find a way to get the review started.
“We told him ‘let’s get on with it,’ ” Saskatchewan Wheat Pool president Leroy Larsen said in an interview.
That day, Collenette met in Winnipeg with prairie transport ministers to hear their calls for an early start to the review.
“We both vented our frustrations,” said Manitoba’s transportation minister Glen Findlay after the meeting.
“We’ve gone as far as we can to be sure that the federal minister who’s responsible … is fully informed of the consequences of not moving fast,” he said.
“We all believe that the review will give magic answers, and maybe that’s a very high level of expectations, but we must get on with it.”
The western ministers agreed to dedicate a senior staff person to help Collenette’s team research for the review.
They also released a draft policy framework for the review, calling for a competitive, customer-oriented system.
The framework lists the role of governments and responsibilities for the overall management of the system as two key issues for the review.
In the Commons, Borotsik demanded that the government call the chief commissioner of the Canadian Wheat Board to order that the complaint before the CTA be withdrawn so the review can start. He has the authority, said the Tory MP. “But will he have the political will?”
Wheat board minister Ralph Goodale said it would be inappropriate to interfere in a CTA investigation.
