The grain companies and the railways may not be colluding on how to handle branch-line abandonment, but their interests are the same, the Reform party transport critic said last week.
Lee Morrison, MP for the Swift Current area of southwestern Saskatchewan, asked the government to stop Saskatchewan Wheat Pool from tearing down elevators it is abandoning.
“I don’t think they are having secret meetings with CN to say ‘what should we do,’ ” the MP said in an interview. “But just as the railways want to rip up the track so no one else can use it, so the grain companies want to tear down the elevators so no one else can use them. They have the same interests.”
Read Also
Manitoba beekeepers battle for survival
Honeybee colony losses have hit 43 per cent, making 2025 the latest in a string of poor bee survival years for Manitoba’s honey producers
In the House of Commons Oct. 30, Morrison said the pool is refusing to allow local SWP members to buy the elevators. Their destruction often takes away one third of the tax base of small prairie towns.
“Will this government just once do something proactive for the benefit of farmers and put a moratorium on the destruction of these valuable facilities?”
Later, he said the government would have to propose specific legislation to impose a moratorium on elevator destruction.
Morrison also has been complaining about railways that rip up abandoned track without allowing local business interests to propose a short-line railway.
He said the abandoned elevators could be used by local producers planning to store their crops or to develop a terminal from which they could ship producer cars.
“Pool members built those elevators and they should be able to have use of them,” he said. “When you bring in the dynamite and bulldozer to burn them and bury them, there is little chance for anything else.”
In the Commons, Morrison’s question about Sask Pool was answered by Newfoundland MP Gerry Byrne, parliamentary secretary to Canadian Wheat Board minister Ralph Goodale. He seemed to think the Reform MP was criticizing the wheat board.
“Despite the fact the world markets have been declining, Canadians have been enjoying world price increases basically due to the Canadian Wheat Board,” Byrne said before sitting down to Liberal applause and Reform guffaws.
