CP says the Federal Government is looking at renewing a failed policy

Last week's Federal Budget called for a pilot program to reintroduce and extend the rail interswitching limit on the prairies.

Elizabeth Hucker, CP's assistant vice-president of marketing and sales for Canadian grain says it's an idea CP Rail is not in favor of.

"Interswitching requires additional handoffs for rail cars between carriers, which in turn causes increased dwell time. This slows the entire rail supply chain and reduces capacity by introducing inefficiencies which could otherwise be avoided."

A similar pilot project, in 2014 under the Conservative government at the time extended the interswitching radius from 30 kilometers to 160 kilometers, that project would end in 2016.

Hucker says a return to any version of the extended interswitching regime will unavoidably harm the performance and capacity of Canada's rail based supply chains as well as increase costs and worsen inflation.