Roughly 3,200 members of the Teamsters union with CN Rail walked off the job in November. (Alice McFarlane/farmnewsNOW Staff)

By Alice McFarlane

Year in Review

Year in Review: CN Rail moving grain again

Dec 27, 2019 | 12:00 PM

A strike at Canadian National Railway added to the stress of a year already made difficult with trade disputes with China and bad harvest weather.

On Nov. 19 roughly 3,200 members of the Teamsters union with CN Rail walked off the job across the country.

Western Grain Elevator Association executive director Wade Sobkowich said the strike would have an immediate impact on farmers with about half of the grain elevators in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba having access only to CN lines.

“They run down to the United States, they run to Thunder Bay and further east and they run to the west coast,” he said. “CN is also the only rail line that has access to Prince Rupert’s northern British Columbia port, along with Vancouver’s north shore terminal.”

Sobkowich said the strike came at the worst possible time of the year for producers.

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“We want to move as much grain as we can between October and March, because that’s when the world is paying a premium for Canadian grains and oilseeds. If we have to push sales outside of that period, then we can’t command as high of a premium for them,” he said. “As each day of the shipping stoppage passes, the impact on farmers “grows exponentially.”

It took eight days before a tentative deal was reached.

Sean Finn serves as Executive Vice President of Corporate Services for CN Rail. He said it took less then three weeks to get back to the pre-strike shipping pace.

“With our railroaders working very hard we’re back to levels of grain movement prior to the strike so we’re spotting cars and we’re at capacity,” Finn said. “Conductors and engineers and our people out there did a great job.”

Prior to the strike, Finn said CN shipped a record 2.8 million metric tonnes of grain in October. He said he’s optimistic about the shipment of grain this winter as long as the weather co-operates.

“If we’re lucky, and we don’t have a long cold snap of three or four days at a time we can catch up. I think we’re in a position where our winter plan is pretty robust but right now we’re looking at making sure we can move all the grain they want us to move during the months of January, February and March.”

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @AliceMcF