REGINA – Dropping the Crow Benefit cuts a tie that bound Canada together, prairie politicians and farm leaders said about the federal budget.
And that doesn’t bode well for the port of Vancouver, they said.
“If it’s ‘Farmers you’re on your own,’ then that’s exactly what farmers will do,” said Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow. “They’ll go to the U.S. and find ways to ship and truck their grain through the U.S. – not in the east-west line which was the national dream.”
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Alberta agriculture minister Walter Paszkowski said he is angry the Crow has been dropped without changing regulations that stop Canadian grain from being transported through the United States.
“We’ve taken one arm of the farmer and tied it behind his back,” he said. “We’ve said go ahead and find more efficient ways, more effective ways of transporting your grain, but here’s what you can’t do.”
Alberta will push the federal government to open up the U.S. border to Canadian shipments, said Paszkowski.
Manitoba agriculture minister Harry Enns said his province will also consider shipping through the U.S. Using the Mississippi waterway may become a tempting option for his province’s producers now that freight rates will be increasing by up to 300 percent.
Use U.S. system
Sinclair Harrison, president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, and Leroy Larsen, president of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, both said they want to use U.S. transportation systems if the Canadian system can’t be made more efficient.
“The people at the ports are going to have to work for less money,” said Harrison, and if the government wants to find out how to run the port of Vancouver more efficiently it should “send a couple of farmers out there and a few dollars and we’ll figure it out.”
Paszkowski said restricting exports to Canadian routes means “we’re held at ransom when there’s a work stoppage. The farmer pays the price … I don’t know any other industry where he’s held at ransom like that.”
British Columbia government spokesperson Shawn Thomas said his government will oppose opening the U.S. border to Canadian exports of grain because it wouldn’t be fair for B.C., which has thousands of jobs at the port of Vancouver.
But “we would be remiss if we didn’t appreciate western grain farmers’ desires to use the cheapest, most effective and most efficient distribution networks,” he added.
B.C. agriculture minister David Zirnhelt said the rail and port system has to be made more efficient so Vancouver can remain the major port for Canadian grain exports.
He said backlash from the Crow’s demise is already being seen in calls for change from an all-Canadian transportation system.
“It’s a blow to the unity of the country,” he said. “It’s furthering the continental integration rather than supporting east-west travel.”
