Justice Willard Estey didn’t ask for it.
But in early September, he’ll find on his desk a detailed study from some of the top minds in agricultural economics on the Canadian Wheat Board’s role in grain transportation.
Hired by Transport Canada, and paid by Agriculture Canada, six academics and five industry consultants will pick the brains of about 25 key people and organizations in the grain handling chain.
The research team will attempt to describe how farmers and others in the industry would be affected if the wheat board had no say, or more say, in allocating rail cars and programming train runs.
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It will paint a picture of what things would be like if the wheat board bought grain at port, or at the farmgate, or at the elevator, with hopper cars allocated by zones.
But the group won’t be making any recommendations. That’s still up to Estey, the man leading a comprehensive review of Canada’s grain transportation system.
“This is definitely an options piece,” said Dennis Tully, with Agriculture Canada’s grain policy directorate in Winnipeg.
The rhetoric on changing the wheat board’s role in transportation has been flying fast and furious since the senior executive officers group first broached the issue in 1995, said Tully.
“It seemed like it would be a practical exercise to actually put something down so there was really a basis for discussing the argument,” he explained.
Ed Tyrchniewicz, one of the researchers, said the team will also examine the current system. But it won’t look at scenarios such as major changes within the wheat board or removing the freight rate cap.
Researchers will consider at each step of the grain handling system how changes would affect efficiency, accountability, competitiveness and delivery opportunities for farmers, he said.
At the heart of the study is a
53-page questionnaire to gauge how the industry views the options.
“Some people sort of throw up their hands in horror,” he said, adding it was sent to about 25 people from grain companies, the wheat board, railways, the grain commission and farm groups. A team member then will spend half a day going over the answers with the participants, ensuring the answers are correctly interpreted.
Tyrchniewicz predicts the study won’t be the “be-all and end-all” of the debate. But he hopes it will shed some light on the issues rather than become a lightning rod for more debate.
Tully said the two departments commissioned the report when bureaucrats looked at Estey’s interim report and thought of several studies that might be useful to Estey and future government deliberations on the grain handling system.
In addition to the effect the
CWB has on transportation, another study will look at cleaning grain on the Prairies. Others aren’t yet approved.
