Madam Speaker, I still find it hard to believe that the government has allowed the railways to impose an additional freight rate increase on prairie farmers. On March 11, I rose in the House to express my concern and ask for a justification. Of course, there was no way to justify this insult to farmers.
Late last year, about November, grain was piling up in prairie elevators and elevator agents began placing orders for grain cars. In December when those cars did not arrive they started phoning to ask where they were. The railways reported to agents throughout the prairies that there were a few minor problems in the system, but the cars were coming in a few days.
In January, the agents phoned again, and again they were assured that the cars would soon be arriving to move the grain to port. By February there were some 50 ships in the port of Vancouver waiting to be loaded with grain that was still backed up in the prairie elevator system and on the farms.
The Canadian Wheat Board reported that the transportation problem was likely to cost the Canadian farmer some $65 million in demurrage charges and deferred sales.
The matter received some media attention at the time and I was the first to raise those concerns in the House by late February. At that time the minister of agriculture expressed some concern about the problem and said that the railways had to take some of the blame for the problem. For my part, I think the railways had to take a large part of the blame. After all, they did have the responsibility to move that grain.
The responsibility was all theirs because the Liberal government in the past three years had surrendered the Crow benefit and the guarantees it protected; had turned over regulatory authority of the system to the railways; had changed the way rail cars were allocated; had privatized CN so the public interest no longer had influence over the way the railways operated; had encouraged downsizing to the point where so many railway maintenance workers were laid off that they could no longer maintain the locomotives and cars needed to move the grain.
In a short three years, the Liberals had given away the store but were now still trying to sell the inventory.
Now in response to the railways' further demand for more money, the Liberals through the Canadian Transportation Agency have improved a further freight rate increase which will likely
result in an additional $15 million being taken out of farmers' pockets.
In the House the other day in March I called this a Liberal reward for the railways' poor performance. It is nothing less. The loss of the Crow benefit was an insult and this is an injury. On top of all this, I read in the Financial Post that the Liberals are considering even further railway deregulation as their answer to this problem. It is obvious that they do not understand deregulation is at the heart of the problem facing us.
When we had the Crow rate and the Crow benefit we did not have the problems we have today because there were performance guarantees required of the railways. Those guarantees are gone and so is the service. A number of provinces including Saskatchewan are calling for a public inquiry into the grain transportation system. I think such an inquiry is necessary. Nothing has been put in place to positively identify where the problems come from and nothing has been put in place to ensure that the problems do not exist again. After more than $80 million in additional transport related costs farmers deserve nothing less.
I ask the minister to justify how any of this is possible and to give us reason to believe that the interests of farmers are in good hands. I do not think he can do it.