The President of the Grain Growers of Canada said, after roughly 30 years, farmers finally have a legislative fix to Canada's rail system.
Jeff Nielsen notes Bill C-49 (The Transportation Modernization Act) was introduced in the House of Commons about a year ago, and was finally passed last Tuesday, May 22.
He said there's important aspects of the Bill they want to see in place for the coming crop year starting in August.
"One would be the ability to have the grain companies in the contracts, so the railroads have reciprocal penalties in there. That will ensure that if, myself as a farmer, if I have a delivery month, that my grain will be delivered in that month to the elevator."
He said it will take some time to get parts of the Bill working properly.
"We would've rather had this done back in early winter, and we could've started working on some of these things. One of the components of it is the long haul interswitching. With CN dragging its feet throughout most of the winter, we could've probably used that to ensure producers effected by the slow down on Canadian National rail lines had the ability to move grain."