Barring an unforeseen glitch, the House of Commons will finish its work with Bill C-34 on June 14 and send the government’s grain transportation reform package to the Senate for final approval.
Even if it emerges from that process unscathed, many witnesses and MPs are predicting the issue will be back in Parliament before long.
“This creates a system that will not work,” said Canadian Alliance MP Roy Bailey. “That will become evident. We’ll have to go through this all again in a year or two down the road.”
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Grain company, railway and some farm group representatives also suggested the mix of contracting and Canadian Wheat Board control being created for the grain hauling system will not function to the industry’s
advantage.
“My personal view is that the resulting conditions will be so unstable that we will be back very quickly talking about another range of changes to the system,” said United Grain Growers president Ted Allen as Sask-atchewan Wheat Pool and Agricore presidents nodded in agreement.
In fact, the one amendment the government allowed to the legislation last week guarantees Parliament will have another helping of grain transportation controversy by winter. A report of the system monitor being created under the legislation will be prepared by the transport minister six months after the end of each crop year and then tabled in Parliament.
Improve with age
Transport committee chair Stan Keyes said late last week that critics of the legislation are too impatient.
“This is just the first step and I commit that this committee will be watching to make sure there are other steps to make sure efficiencies are put into the system,” he said in an interview.
To the “first step” argument used by the government and the Canadian Wheat Board, an angry CN Rail president Paul Tellier responded: “We doubt that the other shoe will ever drop.”
The Commons transport committee gave the bill the quick, four-day study the government demanded, several times sitting into the night.
But even among most government MPs on the committee, the legislation generated little enthusiasm.
“I really have difficulty with this entire piece of legislation,” veteran Thunder Bay Liberal Joe Comuzzi said at one point.
Joe Fontana from London, Ont., another Liberal veteran of the transport committee, said he would rather pay farmers a direct subsidy than use a promised $178 million in reduced grain freight rates to encourage passage of a bill like C-34.
He said he wanted a system with the Canadian Wheat Board on the transportation sidelines.
“We’re in a pickle,” he said. “We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Three years from now, we’ll be back doing it again but for now (because of farmer income problems) C-34 is a necessary evil.”
The major prairie grain companies were strongly opposed to wheat board role in grain transportation. They pleaded with MPs to trim the wheat board’s wings.
They did not get their way, at least not this time.
