Kevin Piper still operates a crane at the Port of Halifax, but with each passing day, there’s less and less work.
This week, one of the port’s largest customers, New Jersey–based Atlantic Container Line (ACL), started diverting its ships to ports in the United States after a rail blockade paralyzed much of Eastern Canada, leaving valuable cargo stranded on the docks in Nova Scotia.
“It’s amazing to me that this has gone on this long,” said Andrew Abbott, ACL’s president. “We’ve always sold clients on the fact that it’s easier (to ship) in Canada.”
Protesters block the Halifax port railway in Halifax, Nova Scotia on Feb. 11.
Laura Cutmore/via Reuters
Earlier this month, what started as a protest of TC Energy Corp.’s plans to build its Coastal GasLink pipeline through the traditional territory of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in rural British Columbia set off a political and economic crisis that is wreaking havoc across the nation as far away as Halifax.
A clash between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and protesters in Wet’suwet’en territory inspired others to set up blockades elsewhere, including one that started on Feb. 6 at a crucial choke point on a Canadian National Railway line in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, about 200 kilometres east of Toronto. Blocking that one spot has apparently managed to freeze freight traffic throughout almost all of Eastern Canada, and, in turn, hindering work at some of its ports.
The blockade is raising fresh questions about how easily a small group of protesters in a remote part of Western Canada have been able to paralyze the country’s economy
Canada’s rail traffic has been halted before, including at least twice in the past year because of a derailment in February 2019 and a CN labour strike in November. But the current crisis is entering its third week, outlasting the previous incidents, and there are few signs indicating that a resolution is just around the corner.
As a result, the blockade is raising fresh questions about how easily a small group of protesters in a remote part of Western Canada have been able to paralyze the country’s economy, and highlighting concerns about the vulnerability of the country’s infrastructure and its reputation in the world as a reliable economic partner even if the short-term economic fallout is small.
The blockade near Belleville, Ont., which started Feb. 6 shut down CN freight traffic in eastern Canada and VIA passenger services.
Lars Hagberg/AFP via Getty Images
Douglas Porter, chief economist at BMO Financial Group, said the blockades could pose longer-term damages, but it’s difficult to quantify the exact impacts of a rail stoppage.
“I do have to wonder if it will do some lasting damage to Canada’s brand, especially if this is not a one-off event,” he said.
The current blockades were sparked by the proposed construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline, which would link up to a liquefied natural gas export terminal on the coast of British Columbia. Both the export terminal and the pipeline have drawn foreign investment, from Royal Dutch Shell and a consortium of investors led by U.S.-based private-equity firm KKR & Co. Inc., respectively.
Other energy pipelines, most notably the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion, which would twin an existing pipeline to carry oil from Alberta to B.C.’s coast, have been slowed or stopped by protests and litigation in the past. Major executives such as Don Lindsey, the chief executive of Teck Resources Ltd., have said the status of such projects will influence whether his company invests in new projects in Canada.
Protests have occurred in the U.S., too, including one that started in 2016 in North Dakota where protesters used sit-ins and lawsuits to delay the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline for months in hopes that it would be rerouted. More recently, there have been similar attempts in the northeastern U.S. to block the construction of gas pipelines.
It’s a network. If you clog a part, you clog the whole”
CN spokesman Olivier Quenneville
But Jim Bookbinder, a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who studies transportation systems, said it’s important to remember that Canada essentially has only two rail systems: one operated by CN and another by Canadian Pacific Rail Ltd.
“We have two nationwide railways, but only two,” he said. “In the U.S., there’d be a half-dozen and it’d be pretty hard to blockade all of them.”
A CN spokesman declined to offer details, but said a blockade at just one spot affects the entire system.
“It’s a network,” Olivier Quenneville said in an email. “If you clog a part, you clog the whole.”
Bookbinder said that most businesses, even those dependent on a functional rail system for supplies, can withstand the impacts of a temporary stoppage in service because they may have excess inventory on hand or they can sustain paying more for a new source for short periods.
That adaptability is partly why economists aren’t sure about the macroeconomic impact of the current stoppages.
“The question is how long it lasts?” said Nathan Janzen, a senior economist at RBC.
Police serve an injunction to protesters at a rail blockade in St-Lambert, south of Montreal, Que. on Feb. 20.
Ryan Remiorz /
The Canadian Press
Janzen noted that the CN labour strike for one week in November inflicted only minimal damage on the economy. He estimates the strike may have lowered Canadian gross domestic product in November by less than one-tenth of a percentage point.
The small effect is largely because rail traffic accelerates once the stoppage clears up and the broader economy bounces back, even if some businesses suffer more acutely from the disruption.
For example, Saskatoon-based Nutrien Ltd., which mines potash in Western Canada, said the CN strike in November lowered its third-quarter earnings by $10 million, but that the current situation has had minimal impact so far.
The reliability of the Canadian supply chain is becoming a concern for us
Nutrien chief executive Chuck Magro to shareholders
“We don’t think it’s going to have an impact to our deliveries right now,” Nutrien chief executive Chuck Magro told shareholders this week, “but the reliability of the Canadian supply chain is becoming a concern for us.”
At the Port of Halifax, Abbott said the current “headache” may deter his customers from using it in the future, preferring instead to route goods through Baltimore and New York, and Piper, president of the International Longshoreman’s Association of Halifax, is worried other large customers, including the French shipper CMA CGM SA will follow ACL’s lead. Some, he fears, may not come back.
At the moment, new ships are still arriving in Halifax, but Piper said most are not bringing full cargo loads, and he estimates that work is down by 50 per cent.
Some cargo is being off-loaded onto trucks, a more expensive and slower way to move freight. There is also some cargo being loaded onto rails, but it is unable to move far from the port, Piper said.
Much of the cargo at the port, however, is just sitting around as everyone hopes for a resolution that will enable rail traffic to restart.
The slowdown at the Port of Halifax comes at a particularly bad time: the port had charted double-digit growth in traffic and added hundreds of jobs in recent years by marketing itself as the fastest way to move marine cargo into North America’s heartland.
“Our niche is time-sensitive cargo,” Piper said. “The thing with Halifax is, geographically, we’ve got an advantage over some of the ports in the U.S., because when things come into our port, it dumps onto a rail car and is on its way to Chicago before a ship could ever get to New York, Baltimore or wherever.”
Union workers have even staked their pensions — by agreeing to use their funds to provide financial rebates to ships that call there — to entice greater traffic to the port, according to Piper.
“That money could go back to our pockets, but we realized there’s a market here that we could entice shippers to go through Halifax,” he said. “What we lose through our pension, we make up in ship traffic.”
Of course, Halifax is not the only place in Canada that’s suffering. Protests near Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and other cities have slowed traffic on various roads, and ports at times as well.
Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs arrive at the Mohawk Community Centre in Tyendinaga, Ont. on Feb. 21. The B.C. hereditary chiefs thanked the Mohawks for supporting them in opposition to a pipeline project on their traditional territory by blocking a critical rail line between Toronto and Montreal.
Reuters/Chris Helgren
The rail blockade in Ontario forced CN to shut down operations throughout Eastern Canada, temporarily laying off about 450 workers. Via Rail Canada Inc., which operates passenger trains on the same tracks, said it is laying off 1,000 workers until the rail line re-opens and is deemed safe again.
How a blockade in a single spot could affect ports hundreds or even more than 1,000 kilometres away, in Montreal and Halifax, stumps many economists and even rail experts, but it’s clearly something the pipeline protestors have realized they can do.
Although many of the protesters are driven by concerns about climate change, the recent protests have an added layer of complexity because they involve questions about Indigenous rights to traditional land.
The proposed Coastal GasLink pipeline cuts through traditional Wet’suwet’en land, which, like most of British Columbia, was never officially ceded by First Nations to the Government of Canada. Within the Wet’suwet’en community, there are factions that oppose and support the project, and there are unresolved questions about who can speak for the First Nations people.
Drew Fagan, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, said the problem’s multiple layers — the protest in B.C. is related to historical grievances held by indigenous people as well as climate change — make it more intractable.
“This is what we call a super-wicked problem,” he said. “We talk about problems that are kind of squishy, not easily measurable, politically controversial, entangled with other problems, with no clear cause and no clear solution as wicked and this is super-wicked.”
Almost seven years since news broke of an alleged conspiracy to fix the price of packaged bread across Canada, the saga isn’t over: the Competition Bureau continues to investigate the companies that may have been involved, and two class-action lawsuits continue to work their way through the courts.
Here’s a timeline of key events in the bread price-fixing case.
Oct. 31, 2017: The Competition Bureau says it’s investigating allegations of bread price-fixing and that it was granted search warrants in the case. Several grocers confirm they are co-operating in the probe.
Dec. 19, 2017: Loblaw and George Weston say they participated in an “industry-wide price-fixing arrangement” to raise the price of packaged bread. The companies say they have been co-operating in the Competition Bureau’s investigation since March 2015, when they self-reported to the bureau upon discovering anti-competitive behaviour, and are receiving immunity from prosecution. They announce they are offering $25 gift cards to customers amid the ongoing investigation into alleged bread price-fixing.
Jan. 31, 2018: In court documents, the Competition Bureau says at least $1.50 was added to the price of a loaf of bread between about 2001 and 2016.
Dec. 20, 2019: A class-action lawsuit in a Quebec court against multiple grocers and food companies is certified against a number of companies allegedly involved in bread price-fixing, including Loblaw, George Weston, Metro, Sobeys, Walmart Canada, Canada Bread and Giant Tiger (which have all denied involvement, except for Loblaw and George Weston, which later settled with the plaintiffs).
Dec. 31, 2021: A class-action lawsuit in an Ontario court covering all Canadian residents except those in Quebec who bought packaged bread from a company named in the suit is certified against roughly the same group of companies.
June 21, 2023: Bakery giant Canada Bread Co. is fined $50 million after pleading guilty to four counts of price-fixing under the Competition Act as part of the Competition Bureau’s ongoing investigation.
Oct. 25 2023: Canada Bread files a statement of defence in the Ontario class action denying participating in the alleged conspiracy and saying any anti-competitive behaviour it participated in was at the direction and to the benefit of its then-majority owner Maple Leaf Foods, which is not a defendant in the case (neither is its current owner Grupo Bimbo). Maple Leaf calls Canada Bread’s accusations “baseless.”
Dec. 20, 2023: Metro files new documents in the Ontario class action accusing Loblaw and its parent company George Weston of conspiring to implicate it in the alleged scheme, denying involvement. Sobeys has made a similar claim. The two companies deny the allegations.
July 25, 2024: Loblaw and George Weston say they agreed to pay a combined $500 million to settle both the Ontario and Quebec class-action lawsuits. Loblaw’s share of the settlement includes a $96-million credit for the gift cards it gave out years earlier.
Sept. 12, 2024: Canada Bread files new documents in Ontario court as part of the class action, claiming Maple Leaf used it as a “shield” to avoid liability in the alleged scheme. Maple Leaf was a majority shareholder of Canada Bread until 2014, and the company claims it’s liable for any price-fixing activity. Maple Leaf refutes the claims.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
Companies in this story: (TSX:L, TSX:MFI, TSX:MRU, TSX:EMP.A, TSX:WN)
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 250 points in late-morning trading, led by strength in the base metal and technology sectors, while U.S. stock markets also charged higher.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 254.62 points at 23,847.22.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 432.77 points at 41,935.87. The S&P 500 index was up 96.38 points at 5,714.64, while the Nasdaq composite was up 486.12 points at 18,059.42.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.68 cents US compared with 73.58 cents US on Thursday.
The November crude oil contract was up 89 cents at US$70.77 per barrel and the October natural gas contract was down a penny at US2.27 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$9.40 at US$2,608.00 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents at US$4.33 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Supervised injection sites are saving the lives of drug users everyday, but the same support is not being offered to people who inhale illicit drugs, the head of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS says.
Dr. Julio Montaner said the construction of Vancouver’s first indoor supervised site for people who inhale drugs comes as the percentage of people who die from smoking drugs continues to climb.
The location in the Downtown Eastside at the Hope to Health Research and Innovation Centre was unveiled Wednesday after construction was complete, and Montaner said people could start using the specialized rooms in a matter of weeks after final approvals from the city and federal government.
“If we don’t create mechanisms for these individuals to be able to use safely and engage with the medical system, and generate points of entry into the medical system, we will never be able to solve the problem,” he said.
“Now, I’m not here to tell you that we will fix it tomorrow, but denying it or ignoring it, or throw it under the bus, or under the carpet is no way to fix it, so we need to take proactive action.”
Nearly two-thirds of overdose deaths in British Columbia in 2023 came after smoking illicit drugs, yet only 40 per cent of supervised consumption sites in the province offer a safe place to smoke, often outdoors, in a tent.
The centre has been running a supervised injection site for years which sees more than a thousand people monthly and last month resuscitated five people who were overdosing.
The new facilities offer indoor, individual, negative-pressure rooms that allow fresh air to circulate and can clear out smoke in 30 to 60 seconds while users are monitored by trained nurses.
Advocates calling for more supervised inhalation sites have previously said the rules for setting up sites are overly complicated at a time when the province is facing an overdose crisis.
More than 15,000 people have died of overdoses since the public health emergency was declared in B.C. in April 2016.
Kate Salters, a senior researcher at the centre, said they worked with mechanical and chemical engineers to make sure the site is up to code and abidies by the highest standard of occupational health and safety.
“This is just another tool in our tool box to make sure that we’re offering life-saving services to those who are using drugs,” she said.
Montaner acknowledged the process to get the site up and running took “an inordinate amount of time,” but said the centre worked hard to follow all regulations.
“We feel that doing this right, with appropriate scientific background, in a medically supervised environment, etc, etc, allows us to derive the data that ultimately will be sufficiently convincing for not just our leaders, but also the leaders across the country and across the world, to embrace the strategies that we are trying to develop.” he said.
Montaner said building the facility was possible thanks to a single $4-million donation from a longtime supporter.
Construction finished with less than a week before the launch of the next provincial election campaign and within a year of the next federal election.
Montaner said he is concerned about “some of the things that have been said publicly by some of the political leaders in the province and in the country.”
“We want to bring awareness to the people that this is a serious undertaking. This is a very massive investment, and we need to protect it for the benefit of people who are unfortunately drug dependent.” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
