‘Will start feeling the pressure’: How the rail strike could impact Manitobans

August 22, 2024 Canuck

More than 9,000 railway workers have been locked out Thursday by Canada’s two largest rail companies – Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd – bringing freight traffic to a halt.

As Canadians wait to hear what’s next in this saga that is centred on union negotiations, many are wondering how this will impact their day-to-day lives.

With the two companies shipping around $1 billion in goods every day, Chuck Davidson, the president and CEO of the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce, said this will have a drastic impact on the economy.

“In Manitoba specifically, if you’re looking at agricultural products and we’re in harvest mode right now, that product is not moving, effective today,” said Davidson while speaking on CTV Morning Live.

“There’s nowhere to store this product, there’s no way to look at other options as well. You can’t just throw this on a truck, that’s not an option. Typically when you’re looking at the loss of a train, it would make up around 300 trucks to replace that.”

Davidson said this stoppage will impact manufacturing, critical minerals, and agriculture as all products will be at a standstill.

Davidson noted several products that Manitobans see on the grocery store shelves are brought in by rail, and if this is an extended problem, it could lead to a shortage of some items.

“If that product is not there, what happens if you have a shortage? Prices go up, people lose jobs. This becomes a huge challenge for consumers as well. The average Manitoban will start feeling the pressure of that.”

Kam Blight, the president of the Association of Manitoba Municipalities, said agriculture producers in Manitoba, especially southern Manitoba, will feel the effects of this strike, which will have a ripple effect on everyone else.

“When the ag producers are having a difficult time, the rest of the community is going to feel it, because they are not coming in to purchase additional vehicles, or equipment, or cellular phones, et cetera because their bottom line has been impacted greatly because of this,” said Blight.

Even with a short strike, Blight said producers will have to find ways to try and store their products and it will hurt their immediate cash flow as no product is moving.

On a longer-term scale, he said farmers might have smaller yields next year as fertilizer and other products also come in on the rail line.

Carl Stewart, a director with the Canadian Wheat Growers Association, said this work stoppage is unacceptable.

“We’ve had 16 major port and rail disruptions since 2010. So this is something that we’ve unfortunately become quite accustomed with,” said Stewart. “You would think at this point we would have some sort of process to deal with these issues ahead of time, but it seems like we’re waiting until it’s a big issue, and everybody’s paying the price.”

The association is predicting an industry loss of $43 million a day for the rest of August and that number jumps to $50 million in September.

He said these are issues that should have been dealt with months ago.

“We can’t simply allow two parties, regardless of what their quarrels with each other are, to hold the entire country hostage. Not saying that their own internal negotiation shouldn’t be allowed to happen, but that should have happened two, three, four months ago, not now.

Both Blight and Davidson want the federal government to step in immediately and end this problem.

“The potential risk for Canada as a result of this strike is significant and it should be something the Canadian government looks at and says, ‘We need to take action,'” said Davidson.

Stewart would also like them to step in, but would also like to see a long-term fix.

“To prevent the economic loss in the future, we would really want to see rail and port services to be deemed essential services. In the interim, we would like the labour minister to mandate the arbitration and get everybody back to work,” said Stewart.

Davidson said an extended stoppage could also impact Canada’s reputation on the world stage.

“It’s not just the short-term, it’s the long-term. What does this do for Canada’s reputation as a trading partner? If it becomes known that we’re not reliable, we can’t get our products to market, we can’t bring products in, that’s not a good position for a country to be in.”

Speaking Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government is taking this issue seriously and it will have more to say “shortly” on how to find a solution to this problem.

– With files from CTV’s Maralee Caruso, Rachel Legace, Rachel Aiello and The Canadian Press

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