Grain companies profiting from marketing chaos

(Pelly, Sk., March 18, 2014)  The Canadian Wheat Board Alliance (CWBA) has released a one page summary exposing how the private grain trade and the Harper government are misleading the public on who is responsible for the chaos at Canada’s grain ports.

“We followed the money” explained Kyle Korneychuk, spokesperson for the CWBA, a prairie wide farm group.  “Our calculations demonstrate the grain companies have taken over $1.6 billion in excess profits from wheat alone so far this crop year.”

Using data from Ottawa-created grain broker Canadian Wheat and Barley as well as posted tariff rates and grain export volumes to the end of January from the Canadian Grain Commission and the Canadian Transportation Agency, the CWBA fact sheet shows the private grain companies are using the system to make record profits at the expense of farmers.

“Mr. Harper’s threats to the railways are a smoke screen.  In fact the farmers’ share of the international price of grain has gone down from 84% under our single-desk Canadian Wheat Board to around 40% today.  It is the grain companies who have taken the lion’s share (about $170/metric tonne) of the international price at the west coast because the railways are constrained by legislation from taking much more than 12%,” Korneychuk observed.

Korneychuk noted “farmers are being hit by the grain companies twice.  First they are not getting their share of the international grain price and now that rumours are floating around that Canadian grain will start to move in greater volumes, the futures price is going down which will be another excuse to pay farmers less.”

Korneychuk heaped contempt on the announcement of fines for the railways saying the penalties of $100,000 a day “mean nothing” to a company like CP, whose CEO Hunter Harrison is the highest paid executive in Canada, earning $49.1 million in salary, stock options and bonuses in 2012.  “It’s chump change.  Harrison makes about $180,000 per day, so he could pay that $100,000 a day fine personally.”

Korneychuk concluded “Ottawa and others are attempting to make a fairly simple situation appear complicated.  When you follow the money it is painfully evident the Harper government is responsible for allowing the private grain trade to steal billions of dollars from farmers.  Farmers have a right to vote on the marketing system they must pay for and the time for that vote is now.”

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