For the first time in Canada’s history, the trains on both of Canada’s national railways have stopped moving. Hopefully, by the time you read this, the labour dispute will have ended and the trains will be rolling again. If not, the impacts of the lockout will ripple across the country, hitting more Canadians and more of the economy increasingly harder.
For weeks, it has been increasingly clear that intervention by the federal government would be the only way to avoid those consequences. When referring to a possible stoppage, the Finance minister said “We cannot tolerate a self-inflicted wound.” Apparently, the government can because its lack of intervention let this wound happen. The question now is when it will heal and how much harm it will cause before then.
If the government finally intervenes, it will likely not be because of the impact on farmers, food processors, miners, or foresters. It will be because of the effect on commuters and consumers who will have been reminded how critical rail and transportation systems are to Canada.
Far too often, transportation is taken for granted. Far too often, stories of poor performance, unreliability, and fallout from service disruptions go unnoticed or are incomprehensible to those outside the impacted sectors.
However, poor transportation systems impact everyone, dragging down economic growth and productivity. As the Wall Street Journal, TD Bank, and others have noted, moving goods to foreign markets has been one of the few economic lights for Canada, propping up a weak domestic economy. Governments like to take credit for increasing exports but seem unwilling to do what is necessary to protect them.
As is too often the case, the calls of resource sectors for intervention were not enough to avoid the lockout. Hopefully this will change as the pain moves from rural Canada and resource sectors to urban Canadian commuters and consumers and the distant problem of rail and transportation challenges becomes very real, very quickly.
This shared pain may be an opportunity to address the immediate dispute and advance long-needed solutions to Canada’s transportation challenges. These solutions require investment, governance changes, and a meaningful strategy, but they will only succeed if the crisis opens the door to real change.
Agriculture and other exporters have offered proactive solutions to resolve these longstanding challenges, but the government’s own Supply Chain Taskforce struggled to implement this action.
The inability of the government and federal parties to provide serious solutions to Canada’s poor transportation performance leads to hostility and skepticism from those who rely on it to ship and receive goods across the country and around the world.
While there has been some improvement in global rankings, the repeated failure to find a more durable and proactive solution to Canada’s reliability challenges, of which the current strike is but one example, may do as much harm as the lockout itself.
Letting the current crisis happen leads customers and competitors to ask, “If a crisis such as this does not drive action, is there any hope for Canada?”
It appears that left to their own devices, the government and Opposition will continue to focus on short-term ideological and political solutions and move on once commuters can hop back on the train to work.
However, there are actions that can help resolve the current crisis and lay the foundation for longer-term improvements that stop the Ground Hog Day loop that Canada’s transportation system has become stuck in.
First, intervention is needed to end the current dispute as quickly as possible. Parliament has legislated an end to disputes in the past, even voting over the weekend. The government has other tools, but Parliamentarians should prepare to return to Ottawa.
If one of the most labour-friendly presidents in American history, Joe Biden, can avoid a strike in a country that relies on rail substantially less than Canada does, Canada’s government has no political or partisan excuse not to act.
A train makes its way through the Rocky mountains near Lake Louise, August 28, 2001. Adrian Wyld/CP Photo.
A better solution is to revamp the legislation to ensure the Canada Industrial Relations Board can impose binding arbitration to avoid the brinksmanship and economic consequences Canada now faces. It should take the pressure off politicians and prevent politics and ideology from getting in the way of the national interest.
While labour groups may oppose such a move, the second step could be to give workers a seat at the corporate table. This may secure cross-party support, with the NDP having already secured an amendment to give labour a seat on port authorities. Likewise, the move has gained momentum with right-wing thought leaders in the U.S., who call for workers to have a seat at the management table.
These actions may be non-starters in normal times, but the present moment of shared pain is anything but normal.
Reducing the risk of further labour disruptions will not fix Canada’s poor transportation performance. That is why action is still needed on the sector-specific and Supply Chain Taskforce solutions. Furthermore, progress is needed on a Canada Trade Infrastructure Plan that has been endorsed by the premiers, and more attention needs to be paid to improving Canada’s economic corridors.
Shippers from agriculture, forestry, and mining have advocated for proactive solutions for years and have effectively begged for intervention to avoid the current disruption. It seems like it all fell on deaf ears. Now that the pain is spreading, hopefully, the government will act. The shared pain the country will now feel is an unfortunate reminder of how critical transportation is and how desperately action is needed.
