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CN sues Richardson to stop grain movement south to US...

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    CN sues Richardson to stop grain movement south to US...

    Someone needs to be taken out to the woodshed!

    Cheers

    CN Sues Rail Regulator
    Blacklocks

    Canadian National Rail is suing a federal regulator and
    the nation’s largest agri-business in a dispute over
    switching grain cars.

    CN lawyers declined comment on their Federal Court
    appeal claiming a right under a 1912 contract to
    refuse to ship competitors’ cars in Manitoba. The suit
    comes amid unrelated complaints of inadequate rail
    service, including claims by Agriculture Minister Gerry
    Ritz that the economy has been “held hostage by this
    poor service”.

    Richardson International Ltd. of Winnipeg last May 29
    contracted a rival railway, Burlington Northern & Santa
    Fe Manitoba Inc., to forward a hundred empty grain
    cars along a CN track to a Richardson elevator in
    Letellier, Man. Under the Canadian Transportation Act
    railways are required to pick up and hand off cars to
    competitors even on their own track, in a system called
    “interswitching”.

    However Canadian National refused, citing a 1912
    contract that prohibits Burlington’s predecessor
    company Midland Rail Co. of doing “local business”
    along CN track in Manitoba: “In the more than 100
    years since the 1912 agreement was entered into,
    neither Midland nor Burlington Northern & Santa Fe
    transacted local business on the CN line under the
    auspices of the 1912 agreement.”

    The Transportation Agency earlier ruled that CN
    misinterpreted the pre-WWI agreement and that the
    railway had to interswitch the grain cars from
    Richardson’s elevator 90 kilometres south to the U.S.
    border.

    Canadian National sued both the agency and
    Richardson to overturn the judgment. A CN official told
    Blacklock’s the railway will continue to switch cars as
    ordered by the earlier ruling pending an outcome of its
    appeal.

    Both CN and Canadian Pacific Rail have been
    condemned by legislators for late delivery of cars
    resulting in delayed export shipments. “We are losing
    customers,” MP LaVar Payne (Conservative-Medicine
    Hat, Alta.) told reporters. “Certainly the railways have a
    monopoly, and quite frankly, I have seen over the years
    it doesn’t matter what the railway – they’re not
    providing the service.”

    “It’s really terrible,” Payne continued. “Their service has
    been lousy, quite frankly. And in my riding of course
    the CPR is there, and so I don’t really have a lot of
    good warm feelings towards the CPR because I don’t
    think that they’ve been doing the job that they should
    be doing.”

    Conservative MP Ed Komarnicki (Souris-Moose Mtn.,
    Sask.) said government action appeared necessary to
    improve rail service: “We need to do everything we can
    in the short term, but also obviously need some long-
    term direction as well.”

    Parliament last year passed Bill C-52 the Fair Rail
    Freight Service Act that allowed commercial shippers
    to request contracted terms of service from railways
    with resort to binding arbitration and $100,000 fines
    for non-compliance. Shippers had criticized C-52 as
    ineffectual.
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