Grain shippers won’t get any “emergency relief” against Canadian National Railway’s (CN) car distribution policy, and will have to wait on a broader review of CN’s performance, the Canadian Transportation Agency has ruled.
The agency (CTA), in a letter Wednesday to the shippers and CN, agreed with the group of shippers — the Canadian Wheat Board and five Prairie grain handlers — that CN’s new car distribution system affects “all participants in the grain handling and transportation system.”
The CTA — the ruling agency on federally-regulated transport systems such as rail, air and seagoing vessels — also said it recognized CN’s new rail car order-taking system has created “some service problems” for the six shippers.
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CN’s car distribution program creates a system where grain is “pushed” forward from its point of origin, instead of being “pulled” to destination, the grain shippers have said previously.
“This prevents efficient matching of rail car supply to ocean vessel arrival, given that each ship must be loaded with the correct class, grade and protein level of wheat or barley,” costing the shippers in demurrage fees as ships wait to be loaded at port, they said.
However, the CTA said, CN is providing service — “albeit not necessarily the service the complainants state they need” — and there’s not enough evidence of “irreparable harm” to warrant emergency relief from CN’s system.
The CTA noted CN’s warning that suspending its new order-taking system would negatively affect other grain customers. The agency also noted the six shippers’ claim that over 80,000 farmers “will be severely impacted by the service failures that will be caused by CN’s new system,” but said there was insufficient evidence to confirm that.
Where the six shippers claim CN’s car system forces them to take part in a system that doesn’t comply with previous CTA decisions on adequate levels of rail service, the agency replied that claim will be considered in another, broader level-of-service case brought forward by the six grain shippers.
In that broader case, which is still before the CTA, the shippers claim CN failed to provide adequate rail service for the 2007-08 crop year.
The CTA has yet to rule on the 2007-08 level-of-service complaint, saying in January that it needed service information from all seven parties for between August 2007 and April 2008 before it could rule on adequacy of service. That information was to be filed with the agency in February.
The CWB’s fellow shippers in these complaints include North East Terminal, Parrish and Heimbecker, Paterson Grain, Providence Grain Group and North West Terminal.
Both CN and the shippers claimed costs against each other in the shippers’ complaint over car distribution, but the CTA’s Wednesday decision awards costs to neither.
