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Originally Posted by smoothpops
Exactly, and the railways have the right to choose the bigger contract to ship (oil industries vs independent wheat farmers). They could have been a collective, but instead the cwb was broken up fine. Just don't make arguments regarding not being able to ship their grain if you voted to break up the cwb. That's all I'm saying.
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No they don't. Under the Canada Transportation Act, railways have a common carrier obligation to accept traffic presented to them. They can't pick and choose what to take. The closest they can come is up the rates for customers they don't want to bother with, but to counter act that shippers can file against them under the CTA.
As the situation developed the railways were just saying "I'm so sorry its 'cause they grew more than expected and weather was so bad and we're busy we swear". So the feds responed by ordering them to ship the grain or face fines.
http://www.thestar.com/business/2014...ace_fines.html
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With millions of tonnes of grain stuck on the Canadian Prairies, the federal government is taking the rare step of ordering the railways to get the bumper crop moving or face stiff fines.
In Winnipeg, Transport Minister Lisa Raitt announced that a cabinet order issued Friday requires Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific to each move at least 500,000 tonnes of grain, or 5,500 rail cars, a week.
If the railways don’t comply, they could face fines of up to $100,000 a day.
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