Bill C-30 (Historical)

Fair Rail for Grain Farmers Act

An Act to amend the Canada Grain Act and the Canada Transportation Act and to provide for other measures

This enactment amends the Canada Grain Act to permit the regulation of contracts relating to grain and the arbitration of disputes respecting the provisions of those contracts. It also amends the Canada Transportation Act with respect to railway transportation in order to, among other things,
(a) require the Canadian National Railway Company and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company to move the minimum amount of grain specified in the Canada Transportation Act or by order of the Governor in Council; and
(b) facilitate the movement of grain by rail.

Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food

[Brent Rathgeber, Independent, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a very important point of order.

On Tuesday morning, during routine proceedings, the chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food reported Bill C-30 back to the House with amendments. I wish to seek a ruling from the Chair as to whether an amendment to Bill C-30, adopted by the committee, is in order.

I understand that generally, the Chair does not involve itself with the business of committees, given that committees are masters of their own proceedings. However, as Speaker Milliken pointed out on February 27, 2007, at page 7386 of the Debates, ruling on a similar matter:

As the House knows, the Speaker does not intervene on matters upon which committees are competent to take decisions. However, in cases where a committee has exceeded its authority, particularly in relation to bills, the Speaker has been called upon to deal with such matters after a report has been presented to the House.

I submit that an amendment moved by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, and adopted by the committee, is out of order, because the committee has exceeded its authority.

The amendments to the committee-adopted subsection 116(4) seek to add an entirely new and different provision to the Canada Transportation Act that was clearly not envisioned in the original draft of Bill C-30, as tabled and passed by the House at second reading on Friday, March 28, 2014.

The summary of the original Bill C-30 states that:

This enactment amends the Canada Grain Act to permit the regulation of contracts relating to grain and the arbitration of disputes respecting the provisions of those contracts. It also amends the Canada Transportation Act with respect to railway transportation in order to, among other things, (a) require the Canadian National Railway Company and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company to move the minimum amount of grain specified in the Canada Transportation Act or by order of the Governor in Council; and (b) facilitate the movement of grain by rail.

Bill C-30, as originally tabled, was about moving grain. It is much needed. It is a serious problem with respect to farmers getting their grain to market. However, the amendment, tabled at committee by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Foods, and adopted by the committee, seeks an entirely new power:

Subsection 116(4) of the Canada Transportation Act is amended by adding the following after paragraph (c):

(c.1) order the company to compensate any person adversely affected for any expenses that they incurred as a result of the company's failure to fulfill its service obligations or, if the company is a party to a confidential contract with a shipper that requires the company to pay an amount of compensation for expenses incurred by the shipper as a result of the company's failure to fulfill its service obligations, order the company pay that amount to the shipper;

The Minister of Agriculture may believe that this is a favourable amendment, and it may very well be. The problem is that it exceeds the authority of the original bill and provides quite an extraordinary remedy in that it gives the regulator the power to award damages in the absence of any procedural fairness, any rule of law, or any discoveries.

In the ruling on the power of a committee to make amendments, Speaker Fraser ruled, on April 28, 1992, at page 9801 of the Debates, stating:

When a bill is referred to a standing or legislative committee of the House, that committee is only empowered to adopt, amend, or negative the clauses found in that piece of legislation and to report the bill to the House with or without amendments. The committee is restricted in its examination in a number of ways. It cannot infringe on the financial initiative of the Crown, it cannot go beyond the scope of the bill as passed at second reading, and it cannot reach back to the parent act to make further amendments not contemplated in the bill no matter how tempting this may be.

It may have been very tempting to amend the bill to provide for compensatory powers within the regulator, but it falls outside the four corners of Bill C-30 as it was adopted by the House.

Mr. Speaker, I submit to you that in this instance, the amendment to Bill C-30 is both beyond the scope of the bill and also reaches back to make changes to the Canada Transportation Act that were not contemplated by the bill. The amendment passed by the committee has the effect of giving the Canada Transportation Agency the right to award damages, a right that at this point in time has been the sole purview of the courts.

The amendment to subsection 116(4) is out of order, because it does not relate to the original subject matter of Bill C-30 as introduced and passed by the House at second reading and because it introduces new issues that were not part of Bill C-30 as originally introduced. The amendment is therefore beyond the scope of Bill C-30 and should be removed from the bill. I look forward to a ruling from the Chair.

Agriculture and Agri-Food

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure and an honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, in relation to Bill C-30, An Act to amend the Canada Grain Act and the Canada Transportation Act and to provide for other measures.

The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House with amendments.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Maybe this is one that our lawyers can answer, but my reading of the way Bill C-30 is constructed is that if you were to accept this amendment, but not amend subclause 8.(2) to include subsection 169.31(1.2) that, in fact, the measure you're proposing wouldn't sunset.

Is that a fair reading, Mr. Langlois?

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

First of all, Mr. Chair, I know you mentioned the Western Grain Elevator Association. For clarity, if I recall the testimony, I believe Mr. Sobkowich suggested that if it could be done in regulation, that would be fine by them. So to be clear on the representation by the Western Grain Elevator Association, I think that point has to be reiterated. You could check the Hansard on that, but I'm pretty certain he said that.

There are a lot of problems with this particular approach. I'm just trying to recall, Mr. Chair, from being part of the Bill C-52 debate....

Let me just start with one of the aspects, shipper paramountcy as opposed to the rail network. That is a problematic approach. For one, if I recall, the Supreme Court has been very clear that railway common carrier obligation is not an absolute, but it is circumstantial. So to be court compliant, there has to be some degree of flexibility with respect to the network as a consideration.

I don't know. I could probably go into a few more of the arguments that were raised back then, but stepping back from that, the approach that the government is taking with Bill C-30 is that issues around operational terms would be a regulatory approach. I appreciate that Mr. Eyking would prefer a prescriptive, legislated approach to that. The witnesses were mixed on the preference for that. We think we can achieve it with respect to the regulatory environment.

We've now, in terms of the earlier amendment, G-1, provided the teeth that they were looking for with respect to entering into service-level agreements. So I think between what will be achieved in the regulation and what is achieved in the legislation itself will be sufficient, and it's what the witnesses were requesting.

I think this reopens the debate that was made at the table with Bill C-52 at the transport committee, and it was rejected for a lot of very good reasons. But we think we can do adequately within the regulatory framework, rather than this.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Okay. So I'll let it stand as it is and I'm going to read the explanation for why we have it here.

Now, of course we know about Bill C-52 last year and the problems we had with that. So now we have Bill C-30 here, and as many witnesses have come forward and told us, Bill C-30 as it sits is quite vague.

What they've always said is that service levels are very important, and they say they're not meaningful the way they are. Virtually every witness told us this: they want a clear, mandatory service-level contract with enforcement remedies that are reciprocal both ways. They don't want to be tied up in courts for 10 years. As we mentioned before, some of this stuff can be tied up quite a long time.

This amendment helps fix that problem. In the first part of proposed subsection 169.31(1)(1.2) we provide a definition of service obligations that all the shippers agreed upon last year. It's precise, it's practical, and it's to the point. These are the things that an arbitrator will need to cover in any of these contracts. When this thing starts rolling out, somebody has to be an arbitrator here, and they're going to have to have more defined rules and regulations.

In the second part, in proposed subsection 169.31(1)(1.3), we shine a clear statement of principle of how you can tell when an adequate performance has been provided, which is key.

And then in the final part, we make the point about reciprocal consequences. This needs to be clearly spelled out in any contract imposed by CTA arbitration. That's what proposed subsection 169.31(1)(1.4) does.

So, Mr. Chair and colleagues, this amendment was also.... The Minister of Agriculture from Saskatchewan recommended many of these here. We even have the Mining Association, the canola growers, The Fertilizer Institute, the western grain growers, I mean the list goes on of everybody who wants more defined rules.

They're not just rules everybody has to follow, it's how we enforce them, how we process people when they're wrong done by, and how people get paid at the end of the day.

So I think they're all here, and we went through this process last year. I think this is a great opportunity to have these amendments in here, and it would give everybody in the system a better idea and something to work with.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Just listening to the explanation you're talking about corridors but the measure in front of us talks about regions. What regions? The Prairies as a region? B.C. as a region? Eastern Canada as a region? I'm not sure that the two are interchangeable in your discussion in terms of the table here. Having said that, it may not be a small technical point, it could be a large technical point. We've had some discussion already, but we did hear from witnesses who suggested that the further down we begin to regulate in terms of the specificity of movements, the more difficult it gets for us. You mandate by volume but not necessarily within a given time on the calendar. Now you're committing to an equitable distribution regardless of where flows actually begin to move.

I think it was Kevin Hursh, if I recall correctly, who warned us against the idea of trying to bore down and start regulating every detail in every corridor, and that this would be a problematic approach, Mr. Chair. I think we should back away from that. If we look at what producers were saying, they would prefer that commercial agreements, with teeth, are what regulate the movement of the carry-over and any additional future harvest that's coming. Our G-1 amendment to Bill C-30, I think, achieves that now, the mechanism by which the commercial regulatory framework can take over instead of getting us trapped on the government's side of regulating deeper in a problematic fashion.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think what the member opposite is trying to achieve is somehow a retroactive compensation mechanism for farmers.

What the bill is designed to do—and this amendment, in terms of improving it—is to address the issue of the carry-over and shipping going forward, and who gets compensated.

If I understood witnesses correctly, in terms of moving grain forward, we had two approaches. We could get into regulating far deeper down into every aspect of the logistics chain. I didn't hear a single witness suggest that was the route we should go.

What I heard from witnesses is that in order to move grain, they wanted the ability to move it by commercial terms through service-level agreements. Their hesitancy in approaching Bill C-52 in order to have service-legal agreements was that they didn't think there were sufficient teeth. This is to do that in order to move the grain on a go-forward basis.

You have an additional problem you're trying to raise. I think you're hoping to make this mechanism the means of going back and addressing that. The mechanism has to be taken for what it is, which is to strengthen service-level agreements. Every witness I heard wanted that. They didn't want a deeper regulation on how to move the logistics here.

That being said, I think the amendment, G-1, should be supported, as strengthening Bill C-30.

[Greg Meredith]

That's correct. The farmer's interests are in the CGA. The amendments to Bill C-30, which we talked about earlier, deal with provisions that can be inserted into contracts and the penalties for breach of those provisions. That's the relationship between the shipper and the farmer, and that's how the farmer gets compensated.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I think what I want to highlight is that this amendment deals with service-level agreements. SLAs generally exist between, for example, elevators and rail companies based on service. That's what we're talking about.

The other thing I would point out is that service-level agreements are dealt with already in the Canada Transportation Act. This particular act here, Bill C-30, is not trying to reinvent SLAs and the way in which they're handled or arbitrated. That's already within the Canada Transportation Act. What this is doing, though, is it's responding to the witnesses, who we all heard from, who said that when it came to service-level agreements, they wanted teeth in those SLAs. That is what this is delivering.

You were asking for an example, so let's take demurrage. A grain shipper contracts with the rail company, has a service-level agreement with the rail company, the SLA is not respected by the rail company, and there are demurrage fees. That would normally be paid by the grain shipper, but now the rail company actually has a role to play in compensating the grain shipper for that, through the SLA. If there's a breakdown, then there's an arbitration process that's already in place for SLAs.

The thing I would point out is that this amendment is strongly supported by shippers from all commodities. It's also my understanding that the Coalition of Rail Shippers supports this.

So this type of an amendment has very strong support.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

That's great. Thank you, Chair.

I understand that this is dealing with basis calculations. I get that. But I do have some concerns. These clauses of Bill C-30 deal with the Grain Commission ensuring that contracts are honoured. But I don't think it's the role of the government to be involved in fairness and accuracy. Those are very general terms for us to be legislating and their interpretation is wide open here. I don't think it's for the government to look at something and say, “Well, that's fair ” or “That's accurate”.

Mr. Chair, I would say that the clause, as it stands right now, is sufficient, and as I mentioned, it ensures that contracts relating to grain must be honoured.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture]

Mr. Speaker, this government has shown real leadership in putting in front of Parliament, Bill C-30. We had witnesses come in front of committee; we held extensive meetings all last week, and we have received written inputs as well. Tonight we will be doing clause-by-clause, and the committee will be doing its work. I ask the member to let the committee do its work.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, about grain transportation, all parties are trying to deal quickly with Bill C-30. The deadline for filing amendments was last Friday. Because of that timing, some key stakeholders had no chance to submit their views, including the Province of Saskatchewan.

We have all just received a letter from provincial minister Lyle Stewart. Will the government accept his request that emergency legislation not be sunsetted in 2016, but kept in place until the CTA review is done and permanent legislation is enacted? That is sensible. Will the government agree?

Agriculture and Agri-food

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have been paying attention. I spoke on Bill C-30, and we have been studying it in committee every day.

I want to know when the Conservatives will stop taking these farmers for granted and actually take action.

The minister knows full well that increased interswitching limits do not compensate farmers and that Bill C-30 is not a long-term solution. These changes will cost rail companies more, and these higher costs will be passed on to farmers. While a few grain companies will fight over the profits, it is farmers who are paying more.

Will the minister accept our constructive amendments at committee?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture]

Mr. Speaker, I would invite this member to follow what is actually happening here in Parliament.

Just last week, our government put forward Bill C-30, which is the fair rail for grain farmers act. It would obligate the rail companies to move one million metric tons of grain a week to help clear the logistic backlog with respect to grain. It would also increase supply chain transparency, strengthen contractual mechanisms between producers and shippers, and help ensure that the entire chain is working at peak capacity.

I invite this member to vote in favour of this legislation.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to see that the House is currently focusing on jobs, growth and long-term prosperity by debating Bill C-31, the Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1, at second reading.

This debate will continue tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday, with members of Parliament having an opportunity that night to vote on this bill to enact key measures of our low-tax plan for jobs and growth in the Canadian economy.

I am currently setting aside next Wednesday and Friday for debate on Bill C-32, the victims bill of rights. This important and much needed piece of legislation would give victims their rightful place in our justice system: at its heart. The Conservative Party has long stood alone in putting the rights and interests of victims ahead of those of criminals.

Also, I would like to note that Bill C-30, the fair rail for grain farmers act, has been making good progress in committee this week. Should that bill be reported back to the House next week, I will make time for its consideration if we are able to enjoy the same level of co-operation that we saw at second reading last Friday, when it was passed by the House after we heard from a speaker from each party.

Finally, Thursday, April 10, shall be the second allotted day. I understand that we will debate a Liberal motion on that day. Perhaps the hon. member for Papineau will ask the House to debate his definition of middle class. In fact, it appears he could have a vigorous debate on that issue with himself that would fill the entire day. I eagerly await to see if his newest definition of the middle class will still include the CEOs of the big banks. I am confident that his caucus will stand ready to move an amendment to that motion if, during the course of the day, his definition changes yet again.

I noticed today in question period that we heard yet another definition of middle class. It is that one magical person who happens to make the median income in Canada. At least that way the middle class is easily defined and the number of people who are middle class is unlikely to change. It is one person, and that is a number that I know the member for Papineau will be able to grasp. He will be able to remember the number one. It is easier than remembering the thousands of billions number that he is also fond of.

I am also confident that he will not choose as the subject of debate the matter of eliminating the budget deficit. After all, he says the budget will balance itself.