Ongoing protests in support of pipeline opposition on a northern British Columbia First Nation could start to have a significant impact on the pocketbooks of Manitobans, .according to one expert.
Dozens of rail line blockades across Canada have effectively shuttered Canadian National Railway service, stranding passengers and freight, which are causing a real-life train-wreck effect, and every waiting day is costing Manitoba farmers money, says University of Manitoba economics professor Fletcher Baragar.
As a new growing season is set to begin, producers are looking to empty elevators and silos, but there is nowhere for the grain to go.
“There’s ships waiting [to pick up grain] in harbours, and every day they’re waiting, it’s going to cost suppliers money and that’s going to feed back to farmers,” Baragar explains.
It’s another tough blow for an industry that was already affected this season by the CN strike, but it’s hardly the only one.
Baragar adds the construction industry is another large sector that could face a slowdown if the protests continue.
“We need wood and steel girders, which are brought in by rail. If this continues any longer, existing stocks will be depleted and we could see some significant spinoffs.”
Those spinoffs could mean the loss of jobs due to a drop in production, either permanently or in the form of temporary layoffs.
The union representing CN’s 16,000 employees, Teamsters Canada, said on Friday up to 6,000 could face layoffs.
Baragar says many people are calling on Manitoba’s huge trucking industry to pick up the slack, but they work together as much as they compete against each other.
“On a per-capita basis, we’re a leading province in terms of trucking activity, but that’s dependent on the rails bringing in the containers and bringing out the old ones,” he says.
“They (rails) are the arteries the economy relies heavily on, considering the vast geographic distances in Canada, as well as how most goods in the country lend themselves to container transport. Then they’re loaded on to trucks and distributed regionally.”
A meeting between Indigenous protesters and the federal Indigenous Services minister was scheduled Saturday to seek a solution to the blockades.
Members of the Mohawk First Nation agreed to meet Marc Miller at the CN rail crossing near Belleville, Ont., which has been blocked for days.
Speaking to media on Saturday, Miller said the situation is “very tense” and “very volatile,” but that the meeting offered a chance to have a “real discussion.”
OTTAWA – The parliamentary budget officer says the federal government likely failed to keep its deficit below its promised $40 billion cap in the last fiscal year.
However the PBO also projects in its latest economic and fiscal outlook today that weak economic growth this year will begin to rebound in 2025.
The budget watchdog estimates in its report that the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged a year ago to keep the deficit capped at $40 billion and in her spring budget said the deficit for 2023-24 stayed in line with that promise.
The final tally of the last year’s deficit will be confirmed when the government publishes its annual public accounts report this fall.
The PBO says economic growth will remain tepid this year but will rebound in 2025 as the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts stimulate spending and business investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the level of food insecurity increased in 2022 as inflation hit peak levels.
In a report using data from the Canadian community health survey, the agency says 15.6 per cent of households experienced some level of food insecurity in 2022 after being relatively stable from 2017 to 2021.
The reading was up from 9.6 per cent in 2017 and 11.6 per cent in 2018.
Statistics Canada says the prevalence of household food insecurity was slightly lower and stable during the pandemic years as it fell to 8.5 per cent in the fall of 2020 and 9.1 per cent in 2021.
In addition to an increase in the prevalence of food insecurity in 2022, the agency says there was an increase in the severity as more households reported moderate or severe food insecurity.
It also noted an increase in the number of Canadians living in moderately or severely food insecure households was also seen in the Canadian income survey data collected in the first half of 2023.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales in August fell to their lowest level since January 2022 as sales in the primary metal and petroleum and coal product subsectors fell.
The agency says manufacturing sales fell 1.3 per cent to $69.4 billion in August, after rising 1.1 per cent in July.
The drop came as sales in the primary metal subsector dropped 6.4 per cent to $5.3 billion in August, on lower prices and lower volumes.
Sales in the petroleum and coal product subsector fell 3.7 per cent to $7.8 billion in August on lower prices.
Meanwhile, sales of aerospace products and parts rose 7.3 per cent to $2.7 billion in August and wood product sales increased 3.8 per cent to $3.1 billion.
Overall manufacturing sales in constant dollars fell 0.8 per cent in August.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
