WINNIPEG – The latest impasse over grain transportation isn’t a good omen, says Paul Earl.
“The system is breaking down before it even starts,” says the policy manager for the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association. “It doesn’t bode well.”
The Canadian Wheat Board and grain companies can’t agree on the details of the new handling and transportation regime, which was to have gone into effect Aug. 1.
The two sides have been negotiating for weeks to set out the new rules but no resolution is in sight. While progress has been made on some technical and operational matters, there is a wide gulf on fundamental issues like how rail cars get distributed.
Read Also
Man charged after assault at grain elevator
RCMP have charged a 51-year-old Weyburn man after an altercation at the Pioneer elevator at Corinne, Sask. July 22.
Earl said it’s “deplorable” that despite more than two years of intense discussion and negotiation about grain transportation, the Estey and Kroeger processes and the parliamentary debate, the two sides still can’t agree on new rules for tendering and car awards for the non-tendered movement.
He blames the board, saying its plan to provide rail cars to grain companies based on the amount of current business they’re doing with farmers is a throwback to the 1960s.
“It’s a totally outdated model,” said Earl, whose organization wanted a fully commercial system in which car supply would be negotiated directly between the railways and grain handlers.
“It sounds grossly inflexible, and cumbersome and difficult to manage and difficult to administer.”
However, CWB officials say the system won’t be particularly difficult to administer and will only require some changes to existing computer programs.
“It will be fairly simple to track,” said board spokesperson Jim Pietryk.
Jim Robbins, a longtime transportation expert for the National Farmers Union, said it is important for farmers that the board be involved in transportation.
He criticized the grain companies for “posturing” and engaging in “brinkmanship”, saying they’re trying to negotiate for rules and policies that have already been rejected by Ottawa.
“There is very much a power struggle going on,” he said, adding the restructured wheat board is clearly staking out a position as the farmers’ advocate against the grain companies and railways.
Richard Gray, an agricultural economist at the University of Saskatchewan, said farmers are better off having the board involved in transportation and negotiating on their behalf.
But he said the board should exercise some caution in enforcing competition through tenders and car awards.
“The board could make it almost a bloodbath for the grain companies,” he said.
“They want to use their position to producers’ advantage, but they don’t want to do it to the extent they reduce the amount of competition in the long run by causing the collapse of grain companies.”
