Mr. Speaker, I am here tonight to raise again the question which I asked on February 6. It is a question in which the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food is very interested because he has said that he is interested in keeping grain moving. I do not think we have gone far enough in getting the grain moving.
The news last week had a number of people from the grain industry, including representatives of the Canadian Wheat Board, arguing that poor performance by the railroads is costing prairie farmers tens of millions of dollars in lost revenues and upsetting export customers. The Canadian Wheat Board has estimated that about $65 million will be lost in demurrage costs while grain sits on the prairies and ships sit in the ports because the grain is not moving to the coast.
I asked my question last week, but since then I have had a chance to look at CN Rail's numbers for 1996. I thought it important to put them on the record tonight in the light of this question.
Grain traffic was down 5 per cent in 1996 over 1995. Despite that drop in traffic, CN Rail reported a $1.2 billion improvement in net income in 1996. In a press release the CN president and chief executive officer, Paul Tellier, said at the end of the year that 1996 was the best year ever in the history of CN Rail. Revenues were up 1.5 per cent while operating expenses declined.
In terms of movement of product, industrial products brought $866 million to CN; forest products, $790 million; intermodal traffic, $710 million; coal, sulphur and fertilizer, $622 million. These are all more than grain and grain product traffic which brought in $570 million.
It is very obvious that CN in particular did a very good job in 1996 of moving all the product except grain. Now we are continuing to have difficulty in moving grain to port.
I first discovered the problem with grain movement around December 1 after elevator agents throughout my constituency had been phoning since mid-November to get cars spotted so that the grain could be moved to port. That was before the major snowfalls, before the major cold occurred. We were experiencing difficulty getting cars spotted at the elevator points throughout my riding, and I have since found out, throughout Saskatchewan.
Throughout November and December the railways were telling the elevator agents that cars would be spotted the next day. They would be told, tomorrow. The cars would never come. The agents would phone. "Tomorrow" they were told. They would phone me. I would be told the grain cars would be there tomorrow. They never arrived. As a result, the Canadian Wheat Board is now estimating $65 million in losses to farmers as a result of all of this.
Government policies over the last couple of years have contributed greatly to the ability of the railways to run their own show. Governments have lost the ability to put pressure on the railways. Everything from the privatizing of CN, the deregulating of the rail line industry, changing the car allocation policy, allowing the abandonment of rail lines and condoning the inappropriate downsizing within the railroads have all contributed to the problem that keeps grain moving to port.
We heard over the weekend the announcement from Manitoba that the CP double tracking from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay is being torn up. This is, to my mind, an absolute abuse of the privileges that we have given to the rail lines to move our product to port.
The minister and the government have the responsibility, indeed the obligation, to ensure that grain moves from the farm to the port. I would like to ask the minister to ensure that he exercises to the full extent of his authority everything that he can to get that grain moving again.