CN Served With New Service Complaint

WINNIPEG - Sep 5/07 - SNS - Six western Canadian grain shippers will file new level-of-service complaints against CN Rail, asserting the railway has not complied with the spirit of a recent Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) ruling.

The first complaints, from the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) and North East Terminal Ltd., were filed today with the CTA. The CTA ruled in July that CN had failed to fulfill its obligations to Great Northern Grain, a northern Alberta inland grain terminal. Because of the systemic nature of the rail shipping problems, the CWB and nine other grain shippers were core interveners in that case, also supported by the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan, other grain-industry organizations and major farm groups.

In their applications, the grain shippers are asking the CTA for an interim order to suspend CN's advance-products program (which will award rail cars to bidders Sept. 6) until a resolution can be found. They have also formally indicated a desire for a mediated solution that would avoid full litigation before the CTA panel.

The CTA found in July that problems with CN's rail car distribution program were not isolated to one company, but "systemic in nature". The Agency also found that CN's current rail car distribution practices "have resulted in the replacement of a reasonably accessible, transparent, user-needs based car allocation process with a more restricted, less transparent regime that does not provide an adequate level of services for grain shippers.

Subscribers can read the full text of the article by Clicking here