CWB on rail
To the Editor:
Recently, Paul Tellier of CN Rail made headline news with remarks about the grain transportation system. He implied that Canada’s grain handling system is out of tune with market forces.
He stated that regulation is the problem and, in a deregulated environment, the railways would do a better job. He also indicated that, in this environment, everyone would be better off.
Before we accept Mr. Tellier’s cursory remarks as the solution to the future transportation needs of western Canadian farmers, we better understand how the present system operates for the benefit of farmers.
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The goal of the CWB is to get the product to the buyer on time and to keep the cost to farmers as low as possible.
Improving the efficiency of the handling and transportation system helps to accomplish this goal.
The CWB and the industry are already well along this road.
Mechanisms are in place to encourage efficiency and to meet the needs of both farmers and customers.
These mechanisms are not regulation, but business operating agreements to which parties are held accountable.
We agree with Mr. Tellier that the notion of accountability and performance is one that needs to be pursued.
However, in order to determine if one is performing, you need targets and a means to measure performance against those targets.
The performance measurements for the handling and transportation system are agreed to through the Car Allocation Policy Group (CAPG ) process.
These commitments represent an accommodation between the railway resources available to transport grain and the shipping requirements of the CWB and shippers of non-CWB and non-administered grains.
At the West Coast, the CAPG target for the movement of all grains for August through November was 6.41 million tonnes.
Of this total, the CWB accounted for 5.05 million tonnes and the non-CWB grains accounted for 1.36 million tonnes.
Over this time period, the CWB loaded 4.99 million tonnes out of the West Coast, or 99 percent of its agreed target.
In contrast, non-CWB grains totaled 1.20 million tonnes, or 88 percent of the targeted level of exports.
At Thunder Bay, the target for the movement of all grains was 4.95 million tonnes for the August to November period.
The CWB portion was 3.34 million tonnes and the non-CWB portion 1.61 million tonnes.
At the end of November, the CWB had loaded out 3.54 million tonnes, which is 106 percent of target.
Non-CWB grains totaled 0.88 million tonnes, which is less than 55 percent of the targeted level of exports.
It is interesting to note that the railways, which are now complaining about poor performance, are responsible for the allocation of non-administered cars, which form a large portion of the non-CWB movement.
With respect to Mr. Tellier’s comments on deregulation, the transportation problems in the U.S. this crop year show that this is not the cure-all that Mr. Tellier claims. There is a tremendous backlog of unshipped grain and other bulk commodities in the southern U.S.
This backlog has reached the point where the federal Surface Transportation Board has required Union Pacific to open a section of its track to another railway in an attempt to ease the gridlock.
The bottom line is that deregulation does not necessarily mean better service, and it certainly does not lead to lower freight rates.
These facts demonstrate that it is very difficult to generalize about accountability without taking into account actual performance measures.
Grain handling and transportation in Canada is a complex business and does not lend itself to simple one-sentence solutions. Co-operation and mutual agreement are key to improving Canada’s grain handling system and having it evolve in the best interests of farmers and their customers.
– Lorne Hehn,
Chief Commissioner,
The Canadian Wheat Board,
Winnipeg, Man.
Who cares?
To the Editor:
Doug Mutch in “World needs no more grain” (Nov. 6) says, “this does not ignore the 800 million malnourished people in the world.” He is wrong, world grain trade does and must ignore the 800 million famished people of the world because they can’t either earn their food or pay for it. Rather than a distribution problem, he should have blamed a cash problem, for world trade can distribute anything where the cold cash flows! … The multi-national corporations seem hell-bent to press wages and living conditions down in the APEC countries to match the poverty of the developing countries’ standard of living. …!
– Ernest J. Weser,
Laird, Sask.
Sask Power
To the Editor:
… I’m sure that a lot of Saskatchewanians wonder why one of our Crown Corporations would invest in Guyana when help is needed here in health, in education, in many other vital projects. Just outside our borders, SaskPower could have bought the Churchill railway and port. When they were sold to a foreign company (and I still can’t believe that our government would allow a foreign company to own one of our railways or one of our ports), the governments of Manitoba and of Canada suddenly come up with money to help out, money which previously wasn’t available for these so-called white elephants.
… No one is saying that we should deny help to poor counties, but does this Guyana deal guarantee help to so-called ordinary people in that country or in this province?
Perhaps I’ve missed the point; I’m just one of the people who pay the bills.
– C. Pike,
Waseca, Sask.
