Canada. Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Distribution of Railway Box Cars : The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Distribution of Railway Box Cars was established under Order in Council P.C. 181, 31 January 1958, on the recommendation of the Minister of Trade and Commerce. No indication of the authorizing statute is given in the order in council. The Commission was mandated to inquire into the distribution of railway box cars for moving grain among country elevators at individual shipping points in Western Canada and to recommend procedures or methods for equity and efficiency in the distribution of railway box cars, particularly during periods of congestion, with specific attention to: (a) the preference of producers to deliver grain to elevators of their choice; (b) the car order book provisions of the Canada Grain Act; (c) export and domestic markets requirements for particular kinds and grades of grain; (d) the necessity, under conditions of congestion, of using all elevator facilities considering the relative ability of individual companies to handle grain at both primary and terminal points; (e) maintaining Canadian Wheat Board delivery quotas equitably; and (f) making the most economic use of railway rolling stock. The commissioner was John Bracken. The secretary was John Rayner.
By 1946 the wartime surplus of grain had mostly disappeared. Because of heavy crop production after that time it gradually increased, and in the fifties it reached unprecedented levels. For example, between 1950 and 1956 prairie farmers produced much more grain than could be consumed. Production of the five major grains - wheat, oats, barley, rye and flax - averaged 1,072.2 million bushels a year. This exceeded the average annual production between 1937 to 1956 by about 201 million bushels, and the average production for the period from 1945 to 1949 by more than 361 million bushels.
The Canadian Wheat Board, which marketed wheat, oats, and barley, could not sell all the grain that was annually produced. As a result, the total amount of grain in storage was extraordinarily large. The grain elevators were often full and sometimes large quantities of grain were still held on farms when a new crop was ready to harvest. The situation was aptly summed up by the United Grain Growers Limited in its brief to the inquiry into the distribution of railway box cars:
"We have in Western Canada more grain than can be promptly marketed, and more than available storage will accommodate. The Canadian Wheat Board cannot sell grain as rapidly as it would like to do; the railways cannot move the grain forward at a rate to correspond with their ability; the elevator companies cannot keep their receiving and shipping machinery fully employed for the very reasons that keep their storage bins full; the farmer is unable to deliver all his grain and get paid for it, instead he must hold large quantities on his farm. The producer, unable to cash in on the full value of his grain, spends more slowly than he would otherwise do and the whole economy of the country is affected."
In times of congestion, when the grain produced exceeded the disposal of it, allocating railway box cars used by the Canadian Wheat Board to transport grain became controversial. For example, in 1957 and 1958 the Government of Canada received correspondence from the President of the Manitoba Pool Elevators, and from hundreds of farmers, criticizing the system of handling railway box cars. In January 1958 the United Grain Growers requested an official investigation into this subject. It said that the congested condition of country elevators made it difficult for farmers to deliver grain to the elevator of their choice. If an elevator was full, then farmers had to wait until space became available, or they had to find another elevator that could accept their grain. This situation was partly attributed to an unequal distribution of shipping orders. Some elevators got orders to ship their grain out, thus making space available in them, while others were filled to capacity awaiting orders for a grain shipment.
The railways, the Canadian Pacific in particular, criticized the Wheat Board for issuing shipping orders before the grain was required at the terminals. This practice made farmers believe that the railways could not supply box cars to ship grain out from the country elevators. In fact, it was a lack of storage space at the terminals that prevented more shipments. The railways also complained that sometimes unloaded box cars piled up at terminals unnecessarily, thus incurring waste.
These and other critisms forced the Government of Canada, in January 1958, to appoint a commission to inquire into the distribution of railway box cars. (See Report of the Inquiry into the Distribution of Railway Box Cars, [Ottawa, 1959].)
Hearings of the commission were held in Winnipeg, Carman, Boissevain, Dauphin and Minnedosa, Manitoba; Yorkton, Grenfell, Weyburn, Swift Current, Kindersley, Saskatoon, Prince Albert and North Battleford, Saskatchewan; and in Grand Prairie, Drumheller, Vulcan and Lethbridge, Alberta from 6 May to 12 July 1958. The commission received more than 2030 submissions. RG33-70 General Inventory
