Encourages grain elevator companies to stop complaining to
governments and step up their performance to help move giant crop
to market
MONTREAL,
March 31, 2014 /PRNewswire/ - CN
(TSX: CNR) (NYSE: CNI) said today it spotted 5,102 hopper cars for
loading at country grain elevators in Western Canada during grain-crop Week 34 that
just ended. This marks the fourth week in a row that CN has
delivered well in excess of 4,000 grain cars to Prairie elevators,
averaging 4,550 cars per week, or 21 per cent greater than CN's
average March performance for the last decade.
Claude Mongeau, CN president and chief executive
officer, said: "We are continuing to make significant progress
toward our goal of transporting close to 5,500 grain cars per week
to meet the Canadian government's Order in Council of March 7, 2014. But CN can only meet its
commitment if all other key players in the supply chain are equally
held to account for their performance."
Mongeau said the federal government has yet to
regulate grain elevator companies, but it has clearly demanded all
supply chain players deliver as much grain as possible toward the
most efficient and fastest transit-time corridors. This is the most
effective way to allow farmers to deliver grain to Prairie
elevators and to ensure farmers receive the cash they are owed by
grain elevator companies as soon as possible. The faster space is
created at country elevators, the more grain, from the most
farmers, will be able to move to market, he said.
"One of the biggest root causes of the challenge
we face is a lack of coordination across the supply chain and
growing pains from new grain marketing strategies following the
change in role of the Canadian Wheat Board," Mongeau said. "Despite
the fact that CN will soon have moved more grain than ever before
in its history crop-to-date, the benefit of its strong performance
does not appear to be flowing to farmers as it did before. The
faster we can ramp up tonnage, the quicker we will be able to
mitigate the effects of the grain backlog for all Canadian
farmers."
In this context, Mongeau added, the recent view
expressed by the Western Grain Elevator Association (WGEA) that the
railways want to move too many grain loads to the West Coast and
Thunder Bay is quite
disconcerting. The WGEA has complained all winter about having too
many vessels waiting to be loaded on the West Coast, and the highly
efficient Thunder Bay Port corridor is about to open for shipping
very large quantities of grain to export market.
"Having wrongly singled-out railways and
unrealistically called for a near-doubling of rail car capacity
since last fall, it is now time for grain elevators companies to
step up to the capacity they claim to have, and do so in the
corridors that will benefit Canadian farmers the most," Mongeau
said.
CN is committed to maximize throughput using the
most efficient corridors available to address the huge grain
backlog created by a 100-year crop. In spite of the burden of being
the only segment of the supply chain targeted by heavy-handed
regulation, the rail industry will do its part to quickly ramp up
to move as much tonnage as possible.
Mongeau concluded: "Unfounded railway bashing by
grain stakeholders and the government's ill-advised legislation to
unfairly punish the rail industry are unfortunately about to set
Canada's grain handling system
backward. We steadfastly believe that ensuring commercial alignment
and encouraging supply chain collaboration are much better ways to
build a stronger transportation infrastructure to the benefit
of Canadian farmers."
CN is a true backbone of the economy,
transporting approximately C$250
billion worth of goods annually for a wide range of business
sectors, ranging from resource products to manufactured products to
consumer goods, across a rail network spanning Canada and mid-America. CN - Canadian National
Railway Company, along with its operating railway subsidiaries --
serves the cities and ports of Vancouver, Prince
Rupert, B.C., Montreal,
Halifax, New Orleans, and Mobile, Ala., and the metropolitan areas of
Toronto, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Calgary, Chicago, Memphis, Detroit, Duluth,
Minn./Superior, Wis., and
Jackson, Miss., with connections
to all points in North America.
For more information on CN, visit the company's website at
www.cn.ca.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain information included in this news
release is "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the
United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and
under Canadian securities laws. CN cautions that, by their nature,
these forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and
assumptions. The Company cautions that its assumptions may not
materialize and that current economic conditions render such
assumptions, although reasonable at the time they were made,
subject to greater uncertainty. Such forward-looking statements are
not guarantees of future performance and involve known and unknown
risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual
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Important risk factors that could affect the
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United States. Reference should be made to "Management's
Discussion and Analysis" in CN's annual and interim reports, Annual
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securities regulators, available on CN's website, for a summary of
major risks.
CN assumes no obligation to update or revise
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SOURCE CN