SASKATOON (Staff) – Grain farmers would lose their only formal input into making grain transportation policy, under a proposal from Transport Canada.
As part of a wide-ranging reform of grain handling and transportation regulations, department bureaucrats have proposed eliminating the senior grain transportation committee.
Federal officials outlined their proposals to committee members at a meeting in Winnipeg last week, saying the SGTC could be history by Aug. 1, 1995.
The idea wasn’t well-received by the elected producer members of the committee like Russell Paul, a farmer from Simmie, Sask.
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“I think it would be a mistake,” he said. “It’s the only place we have some producer input on grain handling and transportation issues.”
As long as the government continues to regulate grain transport, there should be a formal mechanism allowing farmers to have their say, he said.
The committee was created under the Western Grain Transportation Act. Its 28 members include nine grain producers elected by farmers to four-year terms.
Committee chair Manson Moir, a farmer from Tilston, Man., said members told the federal officials that whatever happens to the WGTA, something like the senior grain committee should be kept in place.
“We still felt there was a need for a committee or a group of the same kind of membership as the SGTC, with the producer input in particular coming from individual producers, not as representatives of producer organizations.”
A team of federal officials has been discussing ideas with industry groups for the last few weeks. The proposals include:
- Ending the WGTA rail subsidy by Aug. 1, 1995 and replacing it with some kind of producer payment.
- Replacing the current statutory rate structure with maximum rates until 2000, when rates would be set on a purely commercial basis.
- Removing all branch line protection and providing farmers on abandoned lines with transitional financial aid from WGTA funds.
- Eliminating the Grain Transportation Agency and putting its remaining functions under the National Transportation Agency.
