If it looks like a primary elevator and acts like a primary elevator, then it should be licensed like a primary elevator, says the Western Grain Elevators Association.
The association representing the big prairie grain handlers says producer car loading facilities being built by farmers and community groups across the prairies are primary grain facilities in disguise.
And unless those facilities are licensed, they’ll have an unfair advantage in the handling and shipping of grain.
“We need to have reasonably equitable treatment of facilities, regardless of who owns them,” said Ed Guest, executive director of the Western Grain Elevators Association.
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Producer car sites, such as those being built by West Central Road and Rail Ltd., will gain advantages in a number of areas unless they’re regulated, said Guest.
Those advantages include avoiding security deposits required by the Canadian Grain Commission, covering grade discrepancies at unload, not having to file reports and documents required of primary operators, and getting rail cars.
While licensed primary elevators have to go through the regular car allocation process to get their cars, producer cars are allocated off the top of the list.
“Now you have this facility that does exactly the same thing an elevator does, taking in grain and loading unit trains, but it can get its cars up front and gets the incentive rates,” Guest said.
Grain companies have invested hundreds of million of dollars in designing a more efficient system, said Guest, and new players shouldn’t be allowed to play under a different set of rules.
West Central says it isn’t a grain company and doesn’t provide the same services as a primary elevator, so it shouldn’t have to be licensed.
It has the support of the Saskatchewan government, the Canadian Wheat Board and farm and rural groups like the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities.
“We feel they’re like apples and oranges, the elevator system and the car loading sites,” said SARM president Sinclair Harrison.
SARM has organized a one-day public conference on the legal, technical, logistical and regulatory issues surrounding the producer loading issue, to be held in Regina Nov. 30.
