OTTAWA – For years, St. Lawrence Seaway Authority president Glendon Stewart listened to seaway boosters claim that reform of the Crow Benefit subsidy system would be great news for the eastern waterway.
He said he never was convinced they were correct.
And now that the Crow Benefit is being abolished entirely and the system put on a commercial basis, he is even less certain.
“I was never as sure as they were that there would be a benefit for the seaway,” he said last week. “I didn’t have the confidence that others had expressed that this would be a panacea for the seaway.”
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He said the hope has been that removal of a perceived western bias in the Western Grain Transportation Act would help divert eastward some of the three million tonnes of grain that seaway boosters believe has been artificially lured west.
“Now, I’m not certain of that,” he said.
In fact, Stewart suggested the seaway could be a loser in the freight rate reform.
If an end to the subsidy and the advent of higher commercial freight rates induces many farmers to ship south or to convert from food grain to feed grain, less grain will be available to move through the system.
“What if more grain goes south?” he said. “That will be less for the seaway.”
He said if legislation ends discrimination against Thunder Bay, ends the bias against short-haul lines and recognizes that it costs more to ship grain west than east, then the seaway could benefit from the end of the Crow Benefit.
