Sask. industry leaders join first ministers in calls for pipeline, railway investment to boost trade

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says pipelines are paramount to diversifying trade, along with investments in rail and ports. Allison Bamford has more.

SASKATOON, SASK. — As Canadian politicians gathered in Saskatoon for the first ministers’ meeting, some industry leaders are calling for infrastructure investment to help get product to market.

New pipelines and improvements to railways and ports would help producers increase cash flow, according to Bill Prybylski, farmer and president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan.

“Grain movement has been slow,” Prybylski told CTV News.

If grain isn’t delivered, farmers don’t get paid, which can cause cash flow issues at a very critical time in seeding.

“There’s a lot of cash going into the ground and producers need inputs now,” Prybylski said.

Like other industry leaders, Prybylski believes overcapacity demands on railways could be partly resolved if oil was transported through pipelines, rather than freight.

Potash companies have been advocating for similar investments.

“Our entire infrastructure system is congested,” said Marnel Jones, director of Government and Public Affairs for The Mosaic Company in Canada. “Right now, we just need to be thinking in a bigger way about how we use our entire supply chain more efficiently, and that includes getting oil into pipelines and potash and wheat into railcars so we can get it to market.”

Michael Bourque, president and CEO of Fertilizer Canada, says he’s in Saskatoon this week paying close attention to the first ministers’ meeting. Bourque says 75 per cent of Canada’s fertilizer is transported by rail, and millions of dollars can be lost when it isn’t shipped.

“Rail doesn’t have capacity, or there are bottlenecks along the way,” he said. “So we need to build it out, make it more reliable, make it more efficient and that would go a long way toward helping us expand and serve global markets.”

Like other industries, Fertilizer Canada supports new pipelines. But Bourque says that isn’t the only solution.

“In the long run, that will help the capacity. But in the short term, what we’d rather see is much more investment in the hard infrastructure, especially rails (and) ports,” Bourque said.

Simon Enoch, senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says transportational costs tend to be the biggest trade barrier. Rather than new pipelines, Enoch believes upgrades to infrastructure could better facilitate trade.

“The private sector, the oil industry itself, has shown very little interest, which makes me think that they view it as not a good investment,” Enoch said. “Something like this to be built I think it’s going to require huge government subsidies.”