Implementing the Estey Report will create a permanent farm income crisis: this was the message that the NFU brought to the Ministers of Agriculture meeting in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan on July 6th, 1999.
Over 300 NFU members and other farmers protested outside Prince Albert's Marlboro Inn where federal and provincial Ministers were meeting. NFU members carried placards calling on the federal government to scrap the Estey Report on grain transportation and to instead implement policies that will alleviate the current farm income crisis. Referring to Estey's recommendation to end the grain freight rate cap, hundreds of helium-filled balloons, carried by protesters and tied to trucks outside the hotel, proclaimed: "uncapped freight rates rise."
Although Minister of Agriculture Lyle Vanclief would not address the assembled farmers during the demonstration, he did meet with NFU officials later. NFU President Cory Ollikka told Vanclief that the current farm income crisis is like a wildfire: racing across Canada and wiping out farms. For western farmers, implementing Estey's recommendations would be like pouring gasoline on that fire.
Ollikka told Vanclief that Estey's recommendations would exacerbate the income crisis by raising freight rates, increasing farmers' trucking costs, and increasing road maintenance costs which farmers and other Canadians must pay through their taxes. The NFU called on Vanclief to adjust grain freight rates downward to take into account transportation system productivity gains. Such a move would lead to an immediate $5/ tonne freight rate decrease and save western farmers an average of $5,000 each per year.
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