OTTAWA – The Canadian Wheat Board is uneasy about a proposal that suggests railways should gain control of government rail cars in a deregulated system, board chief commissioner Lorne Hehn said last week.
But the concern is not enough to convince the board to pull out of a consensus position on how cars should be allocated in the future, he told the Commons agriculture committee.
The board signed on to a proposal presented to government in November by a group of senior executive officers of grain growers, handlers and shippers that would see the board’s role in car allocation reduced.
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The wheat board advisory committee and some farm group representatives have been critical of the proposal for its weakened board role and angry at the board for agreeing to it.
Hehn said the board shares some of that concern.
“We continue to support the SEO (senior executive officers group) finding but we do have a lot of concern in the question of car ownership,” he told MPs who wondered whether increased car allocation powers for railways and grain companies would be in the interests of farmers.
On the fence
“At the moment, we remain neutral until the issues are resolved.”
He said a move to entirely commercial rules for car allocation would not be in farmers’ interests. He added the board wants to be sure that the current proposals would not lead to such a result. The senior executive officers group has proposed that the railways own all the cars and co-operate with the grain companies to decide how they should be allocated within large prairie zones.
If accepted by the government, the package of proposals on how to operate in a more deregulated system would include a 10-year cap on maximum freight rates, a $100 million railway payment for the 13,000 cars, a freight rate charge of about $1 per tonne to farmers to pay for those cars and general car allocation rules to be set by a group of industry officials.
