If you don't recall where rural Saskatchewan was at a year ago, allow me to refresh your memory.
The province - all of Western Canada, for that matter - had just recorded its biggest crop in history. A cool spring gave way to a hot, damp July and August that proved perfect growing conditions for grain, oilseed and pulse crops.
The first frost held off long enough for farmers to bring in this bumper crop, but winter did arrive with a vengeance. Blasts of snow and cold from the polar vortex kept temperatures below seasonal for most of the of the winter months.
This bad weather did account for some of train delays experienced by CN and CP Rail in shipping this bumper crop. There can be no denying that.
But a far, far bigger factor in the poor movement of grain was shareholders' greed that has resulted in both railways selling of cars and engines and focusing on the movement of far-more-profitable oil. What was good for shareholders - and certainly rail executives like CP President Hunter Harrison who made $49.1 million in salary and stock options in 2012 - was bad for farmers.
Of course, the railways did what they have been rather good at for a century now. They blamed the weather. And they blamed the grain companies when Saskatchewan Economy Minister Bill Boyd confronted them with pictures he had requested on the farm website Agriville.com of cars sitting idle at terminals.
Despite all this, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz repeatedly said he was "loathe to regulate" the railways to live up to their mandate by moving western grain.
Well, after much prompting, the federal government did come forward with Bill C-30 (and act to amend the Canada Grain Act) that subjected railways to a $100,000 a day fines if they failed to move a million tonnes a week. It was considerably less than the Saskatchewan government's call for $250,000 per day for failing to move 13,000 cars a week.
Some estimate that the failure to move grain cost the Western economy as much as $8.3 billion and even more conservative estimates suggest it still cost between $2- and $3 billion.
Well, fast forward a year and we are again getting our first blast of what is expected to be another bidder winter after a considerably less spectacular crop already delayed by an unseasonably wet harvest that extended into late October.
The bins are again full on many Saskatchewan farms, but that's sometimes because the grains, oilseeds and pulses from last year have not yet moved.
And politicians - at least on the provincial level - are again talking about what can be done to prevent an even more disastrous repeat of last year.
At the recent gathering of the North West Partnership in Regina, B.C. Premier Christy Clark, Alberta Premier Jim Prentice and Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall concluded Ottawa should invest $1.5-billion in transportation to ease the problem.
Japan is no longer buying western Canadian wheat for the first time in 40 years, Wall told reporters. And he explained how officials from a Malaysian milling operation told him there is no point in ordering Saskatchewan product in November and December because they can't rely on it getting there.
The premiers did bring various stakeholders into the conversations including the grain companies, railways and federal government, represented by Prince Albert MP Randy Hoback.
Ritz was off in China with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. And questions remain whether that $100,000 a day fine for the railways has been reduced to $100,000 a week - a pittance for the railway companies.
In short, while the provinces seem to trying to do something, the feds seemed to have learned precious little from the grain movement mess of a year ago.
Sadly, we may be in for another long, cold winter.
Murray Mandryk has been covering provincial politics for over 22 years.
