Hot air surrounds the truck-vs.-rail debate in Canada

This coming year is perhaps the most crucial in the relatively young life of the Canadian Trucking Alliance, the industry’s lobby group in Ottawa. A federal transportation blueprint to be released shortly is expected to place a great deal of emphasis on intermodal in future policies and planning. The railways are out lobbying the cause — trucks and rail working together, is how they frame it — explaining that a shift of freight from truck to rail would be better for the environment and reduce congestion on the highways.

What the railways ultimately want is a bigger piece of the pie when funds are divvied up for infrastructure.

“Are you ministers of transportation, or highways?” Canadian Pacific Railway president and CEO Rob Ritchie asked provincial transport ministers at a meeting in Vancouver last month. “As matters stand today, it is my distinct impression that public roads and highways are your primary focus.”

Ritchie, incidentally, wants half of $300 million earmarked for border improvements at Windsor, Ont., to help pay for a new rail tunnel under the Detroit River.

The fact is the railways have a limited window of opportunity to affect the long-term priorities for highway and transportation spending. It’s uncertain that David Collenette — whose advocacy of rail is unabashed — will keep his transport portfolio after the next federal leadership change, perhaps 18 months away. While they have a friend in office, Ritchie, new Canadian National chief executive Hunter Harrison, and the Railway Association of Canada will be pushing hard for changes to fuel and property tax policies — they want the taxes they pay to be invested in new rail projects.

While the railway lobby has cycled out promises of cleaner air and clearer highways before, this time is different. The Kyoto Protocol, which Prime Minister Jean Chrétien wants the federal government to ratify by the end of the year, gives a new framework to assertions that trucking is some sort of environmental thug — a charge that’s tough to swallow when you consider the industry’s progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The challenge for the Canadian Trucking Alliance will be to defend the industry’s record on the environment while at the same time directing policymakers to the real competitive issue surrounding Kyoto: that all freight modes in Canada will be at a disadvantage to commercial carriers from the United States, a country that has no plans to embrace Kyoto.

Unfortunately, as long as the railways continue to stoke up old he-said/she-said squabbling here at home, the need for parity with U.S. freight carriers on taxation and other policies that tip the competitive balance toward the south will not get the attention they deserve.