A Saskatchewan Reform MP wondered last week if the real Liberal grain transportation plan for the Prairies is to return farmers to the era of horse-drawn grain wagons.
Taking up a familiar cry from prairie provincial governments, Cypress Hills-Grasslands MP Lee Morrison told the House of Commons the roads are becoming almost unusable.
The reason, he said, is increased truck traffic because of rail-line abandonment.
The solution, he said, is for the federal government to invest some of the hundreds of millions of dollars it collects in fuel taxes back into the road system.
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“The prairie highway system was designed to supplement the railroads, not to replace rail hauling,” Morrison told transport minister David Collenette. “It is being destroyed, especially in Saskatchewan where it is already a shambles.”
The MP said government takes $635 million per year out of the Prairies in fuel tax and reinvests just $13 million in roads.
“Does the minister want us to go back to moving our grain with horse-drawn wagons, or will this government put some of its fuel loot back where it belongs, into highways in the provinces?” asked the Reform transportation critic.
Earlier, Souris-Moose Mountain Reform MP Roy Bailey raised the same issue.
Farmers are driving “hundreds of kilometres on torn-up roads to get to the main line terminals,” said Bailey.
“When will this government spend our federal fuel tax revenue where it should be spent, on improving roads so farmers can get their grain to market?”
No comment
Collenette deferred to the pending report on grain transportation from Justice Willard Estey.
“We will be having this debate in the coming months,” he said. “I do not believe we can actively engage in that debate at this point, not until we have judge Estey’s report.”
