OTTAWA (Staff) – A Manitoba Liberal MP last week campaigned to convince her own government not to deregulate the grain transportation system without creating an agency to make sure farmers are not the victims.
“I just think it is absolutely crucial that we have somebody watching the system, mainly because I think we don’t know where we’re going on this in a deregulated regime,” Marlene Cowling (Dauphin-Swan River) said in an interview.
“They don’t know what may happen, what stumbling block there may be so let’s just watch it.”
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Finds support
Cowling made her point at a series of committee meetings recently as MPs considered the implications of abolishing the Western Grain Transportation Act and changing the grain pooling points for grain bound for the St. Lawrence Seaway on Aug. 1.
She won support from some fellow MPs and witnesses in her call for a new overseer body.
“We need a body to watch over the system,” John Clair of Radisson, Sask., vice-chair of the Canadian Wheat Board advisory committee, told a hearing June 8. “We need it for our protection.”
Larry Maguire, president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, disagreed. He told another MPs’ hearing that the goal should be less regulation, not more.
Liberals criticized
Advisory committee chair Wilf Harder chided the Liberals on the issue.
“We already have an overseer, the Grain Transportation Agency, and you are taking it away,” he said.
It is because the Liberals are abolishing the GTA and removing most of the role of the National Transportation Agency in the grain transportation system that Cowling has been arguing for a continuing overseeing group.
Transport minister Doug Young, one of those spear-heading the government deregulation push, appears to be in no mood to set up more regulatory bodies. He is arguing that farmers and the entire economy will benefit from fewer regulations and overseer bodies.
