Details this autumn | The transport minister says the bill will provide service and dispute resolution guidelines
Despite railway assertions that they do not want legislation that sets rules for improved service levels for commodity shippers, the federal government says a bill is coming.
However, shippers do not know when it will come or what it will say.
Liberal critic Ralph Goodale says he is skeptical it will say much at all.
The issue was raised recently because attempts by former Alberta treasurer Jim Dinning to find common ground between shippers and railways apparently has ended in failure.
Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said that while it will be Transport Canada legislation, his preference would be to table the bill in Parliament soon “so that farmers have an idea of what’s coming.”
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Transport minister Denis Lebel recently told the House of Commons that legislation is planned “that would provide shippers with a service agreement template and dispute resolution guidelines,” but he did not respond to a demand by Goodale that the bill be tabled before the Commons rises in June for the summer recess.
Goodale later predicted the bill will not come at least until autumn and it will be “disappointing” with different rules for tiers of shippers.
The Conservatives promised action more than a year ago and appointed Dinning to try to “facilitate” an agreement on acceptable level of service rules after a report highlighted complaints about poor and erratic railway service performance.
At Dinning’s last meeting in mid-April before he writes his report for Lebel, the railways continued to insist legislation is not needed to force service improvements, said Bob Ballantyne, chair of the Coalition of Rail Shippers.
“My understanding from the meeting is that the shipper perspective is the railways are not prepared to make any commitment to doing more than they do today,” he said.
“That is disappointing, and now Mr. Dinning has to decide what to recommend. The government has promised legislation so we’ll have to see what it says.”
After a federal-provincial agriculture ministers’ meeting April 20 in Gatineau, Que., Ritz noted that an Agriculture Canada and industry group led by deputy agriculture minister John Knubley and Gordon Bacon from Pulse Canada held its own hearings on the issue and will submit their report on the agricultural perspective to Dinning.
“I’ve had separate discussions with the railways,” said Ritz.
“They claim they don’t need the legislation because they’ve shown they can do better. My response to them is that’s great and we’ll never have to use that tool in the tool kit, but I assured them that it will be there.”
Goodale said the promise of legislation, now more than a year old, is getting stale.
In an earlier interview, the former agriculture minister said he expects and fears that the railways are using the delay to lobby fiercely to water down the service requirements as much as possible.
On April 25, Lebel chided Goodale for the fact that he was in government for 13 years and yet no action was taken on the file.
“People have been waiting a long time,” he said in the Commons. “They waited 13 years for the Liberals to do something. We are delivering.”
At an earlier appearance at the Commons transport committee, Lebel said the legislation will be “informed” by the Dinning recommendations.
With the facilitator’s report not expected until summer at the earliest, legislation likely will not be ready until well into autumn or winter after Parliament returns in September.
