Last week, the Canadian government chose to let the minimum volume requirements for grain shipping imposed on our country's two major rail companies roughly one year ago finally lapse.
Last week, the Canadian government chose to let the minimum volume requirements for grain shipping imposed on our country's two major rail companies roughly one year ago finally lapse.
The federal government announced March 28 that it will not renew an order expiring that very day requiring CN and CPR to move a certain number of metric tones of grain per week or face fines of up to $100,000 per violation.
Although this is a national issue, the interest to the Westlock area - which is dominated by agriculture - is obvious.
When the federal government first issued the order regarding minimum grain volume requirements, the industry was in crisis. One of the largest harvests on record was simply going to rot in grain bins across the country.
As much as the rail companies may have protested, drastic measures were needed. Notably, even the mandatory requirements, the whole debacle ended up costing Canadian farmers an estimated $5 billion.
But now it's a year later, and while there are major underlying problems with rail transportation in this country, the crisis has been ... well, not resolved, but it's no longer as immediate.
Not everyone was pleased with the decision. Some groups say the federal government should have maintained the order and even demanded CN and CP to move even more grain.
Others took a more moderate approach, pointing out that more needs to be done to prevent such a backlog in the future.
And that's the key point, we think. Simply demanding the grain companies do more isn't enough; there are some major underlying issues within the system that need to be corrected.
The federal government has contributed $1.5 million towards a five-year initiative to identify the problems within the system, and has enacted a lot of other measures designed to improve grain transportation. Those are all good.
But maybe we need to think about doing some serious investment into upgrading Canada's fleet of aging grain cars, coupled with greater oversight by the federal government.
The railways may protest that last point, but it beats simply waiting for another massive backlog to happen again.
