Canadian Pacific Rail says its western grain movements in October were its best ever despite dealing with a weather-delayed harvest. A record 15,865 carloads were moved to West Coast ports in October, besting the previous record of 15,449 carloads in March 2016. Total Western Canadian grain movements in the month climbed 3.9 per cent over […] Read more
CP says its grain movement to Vancouver is its best-ever last month
Latest rail bill highlights the need for change, says farm leader
The $1.3-billion tab for moving last year’s crop shows ‘there will never be an open market,’ says Alberta Wheat chair
Reading Time: 4 minutes The final tally is in and Prairie farmers spent more than $1.3 billion on rail transportation in the last crop year. The average bill was $33.69 a tonne for the 2013-14 crop year (a drop of 30 cents per tonne from the previous year) and the total cost was almost exactly what’s allowed under federal […] Read more
PR fumbles and effective lobbying = grain-movement order
Five to Remember: While the railways were defending their performance, farmers were successfully urging Ottawa to crack the whip
Reading Time: 3 minutes The year dawned with CN and CP Rail insisting they were doing an excellent job moving grain, and weren’t to blame for plugged elevators and empty freighters anchored on the West Coast. It proved to be a spectacularly ineffective bit of PR. Everyone knew moving the all-time-record harvest of 2013 would be a challenge, and […] Read more
Alberta farm leader says rail system fix is on track
Ordering the railways to move more grain has grabbed the spotlight, but Kent Erickson says newly enacted legislation will bring long-term gains
Reading Time: 3 minutes New federal rail legislation is the first major step in building a sustainable and reliable rail transportation system, says the chair of the Alberta Wheat Commission. But in the meantime, extending an order-in-council that penalizes the railways if they fail to move a million tonnes of grain a week is the best short-term fix, said […] Read more
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