At 12:01 a.m. Thursday, freight traffic on the two largest railways in Canada came to a halt, as Canadian National Railway Co. And Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. Locked out 9,300 employees, including engineers, conductors and yard workers, after the two sides were unable to agree on a new contract before the deadline.
The move is expected to have drastic impacts on the economy, from the national level down to the local level. One of the larger sectors that is expected to be impacted is the agriculture industry, with producers now being left in a position of not being able to deliver grain. Sask Wheat, which represents the wheat and winter cereal producers of the province, said in a release Thursday morning that over 200,000 tonnes of wheat and durum are shipped per week during the harvest period. This is expected to have a $55 million per week financial impact.
Here in Weyburn, there is the potential for a number of other impacts, explained Monica Osborn. She is the executive director of the Weyburn Chamber of Commerce.
“It definitely affects everyone, and I don’t know if everyone realizes the vast majority that it is going to affect,” she told Discover Weyburn. “A lot of your products and services that come from the retail sector, they initially start on the train, and then get to a distribution point, and then at that point, then it gets onto the truck and comes to the community.”
The disruption to the supply chain is the latest one seen in Canada, with a number of issues over the past five years, including other work stoppages, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Osborn added that the longer this goes on, the more it is going to affect the community. However, there could be a silver lining for some small businesses, as they may be able to pivot to see what they can source locally.
“And locally I mean all across Saskatchewan,” Osborn said. “Somewhere that they can maybe drive to pick up that product, or whatever they might need. So, it might end up being somewhat of an advantage to some of the other smaller businesses that can provide types of services, but you will definitely see a gap in what you can find on the shelves.”
Now, there are calls from across the country for the federal government to step forward to bring the stoppage to an end, using whatever means at their disposal. Osborn pointed out they started out the calls for action before the lockout even started.
“A while ago, the Canadian Chamber (of Commerce) had actually put forward a letter of recommendation for the federal government to step in to essentially prevent the stop from happening, from the strike from happening, and so we signed that letter a while ago.”
While the trains may be stopped, trucking is still running throughout the country, but isn’t in a position to be able to pick up the slack. Sask Wheat stated to cover the amount of grain needed to be moved each week during harvest, an additional 5,000 trucks would be needed.
“Right now, they have a major concern with what they have to provide,” Osborn said. “They already have a shortage in labour in the trucking industry, and now this is just going to provide a bigger impact on them, and they have stated that they don’t have the capacity to provide that service to get the products and services to where they need to be.”