Prairie grain companies and Canadian Wheat Board directors will meet next week to try to resolve some of their sharp differences over the new rules of the grain transportation business.
Arrangements for the meeting were made late last week and over the weekend after some not-too-subtle hints from Ottawa that a mediator would not be appointed to help resolve their dispute.
“The very best result is for the players to come back in negotiations and in a business-like way resolve their differences,” Goodale said in a Sept. 25 interview.
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“I am encouraged they have arranged a meeting to pursue that option. I’ll obviously be watching very carefully.”
At the Winnipeg-based Western Grain Elevators Association, executive director Ed Guest said Sept. 25 his 10 corporate members are optimistic about the meeting. They will insist they need the responsibilities and logistical flexibility that comes with being designated the shipper of the grain. Under government legislation approved in June, the CWB is the shipper of record.
“Our policy is not to have the government mad at us or the wheat board mad at us,” he said. “If we’re jumping up and down and finger-pointing, we’re not going to get the system working and that’s what we want. So do farmers, by the way.”
The agreement to meet, and Goodale’s decision to withhold a formal response to a grain company appeal for a mediator, ended the potential for even more tension in a tense situation.
As last week wore on with no movement on either side, Goodale appeared to be growing frustrated with the grain companies.
Some pro-wheat board MPs in his Liberal caucus were denouncing the companies for trying to pressure the CWB to do in contract what the government said in legislation it should not do.
On Sept. 21, the Regina-based minister said he had written a letter with transport minister David Collenette and agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief responding to the companies.
He planned to send it within hours and would not disclose the precise response.
The tone of the message was clear.
“The whole idea is that the parties sit down with each other as mature, responsible adults in a commercial environment and negotiate their terms without getting enmeshed in a great administrative or regulatory web,” he said.
Goodale found it “peculiar” that the grain companies that promoted a more commercial system in June now were asking for more regulation.
“It is an interesting reversal of field in terms of who is out there trying to make the system work and who is not.”
The grain companies say the rules imposed on their relationship with the board make the system unworkable.
Goodale said this is a transition period to be worked out by the players.
“But as the commercial players work their way through their new relationships, none of them should for a second think of a tactic that would use farmers as a bargaining chip,” he said. “That is totally wrong.”
Did he think that is what grain companies were doing by not bidding on CWB tenders and in one case, having two companies threaten not to unload grain from those who did bid on tenders?
“I would say there is a risk of that,” he said.
The companies and the board have the tools given them by the government to make the system more commercial, he said.
“Get on with it,” said Goodale. “If you’ve got a grievance against some other player in the system, don’t take it out on farmers.”
Guest said the companies will insist in the meeting with the CWB that they need the flexibility to take advantage of deals with the railways, as the grain shipper, which will allow them to negotiate incentive rates, tonnage incentives and other efficiencies.
“We don’t want a major derailment of the system this fall.”
Meanwhile, Canadian Alliance transportation critic Jay Hill said Goodale should have appointed a mediator for the short term and then announced he will open up the legislation to reduce the CWB role.
“All he is doing is delaying the inevitable,” Hill said.
” This system will not work. It will crash.”
