As a shallow and yellow journalist, here’s what I hoped to see when I went to a luncheon just now at which the Canadian Wheat Board was introducing the president and CEO of CN Rail:
Ahhhhhh, such drama!!!!! Such sturm und drang!!!!! Such fun to report!!!!
Alas, it was not to be. Instead, I found generally good relations between CN and the CWB, in which both sides acknowledged much better coordination and service for getting farmers’ grain to port than has often been the case. Better coordination is making the trains run mostly on time and getting where they’re supposed to get. CN president and CEO Claude Mongeau declared his commitment to treating farmers as partners, and after Mongeau’s speech CWB Ward Weisensel didn’t take the chance, when talking to reporters, to badmouth CN. When he introduced Mongeau, this is part of what he said:
“He told us customer service would be a priority for CN, and he has delivered on that promise . . . Under Claude, CN has quickly moved to a much more collaborative model, which we have greatly appreciated,” said Weisensel.
So rather than fire-belching battleships trading broadsides, the mood was more like this:
Mongeau, in his speech, said the Canadian rail system is “a fiercely competitive industry,” that CN is committed to working “Together” (that word is in some of the company’s new advertising), and it wants to drastically increase efficiency. In fact, he argued that there may be more gains to farmers from increased transportation efficiency than from yield gains in crop production.
As part of that, he promoted his company’s Scheduled Grain Plan, which is a complicated thing that goes way far over my head at the moment, but according to the news release it’s “delivering specified hopper cars to specified elevators on specified days each week,” which sounds like a good idea, specifically.
He said he thinks the rail system could be much improved, and warned against calls for re-regulation of the rail industry. “Instead of encouraging collaboration” re-regulation would wipe everyone’s smiles away, he argued.
Read Also
Growth plates are instrumental in shaping a horse’s life
Young horse training plans and workloads must match their skeletal development. Failing to plan around growth plates can create lifelong physical problems.
I’m sure a lot of farmers would disagree with Mongeau’s characterization of the rail industry as “fiercely competitive,” and I mentioned that to him afterwards in a scrum he did with reporters. And I said many farmers think regulatory oversight is the only thing that protects farmers from the railways. So he talked about that issue in a general way, the details of which I can’t immediately recall and will have to re-live by going back through my recording of the scrum.
But what was most interesting was scrum comments from Weisensel, who said CN’s performance is far better than CP’s this year. CN and the CWB are working very well together this year and the board likes CN’s collaborative behavior and that’s showing results for farmers. CP is falling far behind CN this year, and Weisen said that is a concern for the board and farmers. CP is not working nearly as closely with the board in coordinating grain shipments, he said.
While there was much friendliness between Weisensel and Mongeau, they didn’t agree on the issue of regulatory oversight for the railways. Mongeau wants less, or – as it sounded to me – almost none at all, while the board wants farmers interests to be represented in some way through continuing regulations and oversight.
“There are some things we don’t totally agree on . . . Us representing farmers, we might have a bit different view,” said Weisensel. “I respect his views, but I think our views are well-founded. That said, that has not hindered our ability to move forward on a very positive commercial relationship.”
So with that the event ended for me, and I found I had a generally cheerful story in hand, rather than a generally conflictual one. That’s good for all you farmers, but it’s harder for me as an ag journalist to make exciting.
Well, perhaps I can mix in some more battleship metaphors. There must have been a time in naval history when battleships worked “Together,” collaboratively . . .
