The disruption in rail service caused by anti-pipeline protesters is having a significant impact on some Canadian industries, costing millions and damaging Canada’s reputation as a supplier of goods, industry leaders say.
“Every day that it goes on, the damage compounds,” said Perrin Beatty, CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
“It is damaging our international reputation as a reliable supplier. It is affecting our supply chains around the world.”
Anti-pipeline protesters who are demonstrating around the rail lines near Belleville, Ont., and New Hazelton, B.C., have prompted CN Rail to temporarily shut down parts of its network, the railway said in a statement Tuesday. There is currently no movement of any trains — freight or passenger — at both those locations, crippling the ability to move goods and facilitate trade.
Via Rail said Wednesday it has cancelled its Montreal-Toronto and Toronto-Ottawa routes until Friday. The passenger rail service said that 256 trains had been cancelled, impacting 42,100 passengers.
Since last week, the Mohawks of Tyendinaga have been protesting in support of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, who oppose of the Coastal GasLink pipeline in B.C. The demonstrators are not blocking the railways but are too close to the tracks for the trains to pass, rail officials say.
In an open letter to federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau and Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry Nadveep Bains, Beatty wrote that his organization is “deeply concerned about the damage to the Canadian economy” caused by the rail disruption.
“A rail disruption of this magnitude constitutes an emergency for the Canadian economy,” wrote Beatty, a former Conservative MP and cabinet minister, and one-time CEO of CBC.
Foods, grain, propane stopped
Beatty implored the government to bring an end to the disturbance that he said has severely limited the movement of perishable foods and other consumer items, grain, construction materials and propane for Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
The stoppage has also affected the movement of natural resources like timber, aluminum, coal and oil, while factories and mines may soon face difficult decisions about their ability to continue operations, he said.
“And the worry for Canada is if people say, well, Canada as a result of this isn’t a reliable supplier, we need to go somewhere else,” Beatty told CBC News.
A member of the Mohawk community stands atop a snow blockade of the commuter rail line Wednesday in Kahnawake, Que. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press)
As well, the rail supply chain isn’t like a “tap you simply turn it on and off. Once it’s shut down, it takes days to get it back up again,” Beatty said.
Derek Nighbor, president and CEO of the Forest Products Association of Canada, said that for his industry — which represents about 10 per cent of total tonnage on railway lines — every day that there is a disruption will take two days to bounce back.
Costing forestry industry ‘millions and millions’
The rail disruptions have cost Canada’s wood, pulp and paper producers “millions and millions of dollars” through lost sales, lack of ability to deliver to customers, and increasing warehousing costs, Nighbor said. Mills are unable to get the raw materials they need to operate, and they’re not getting the empty rail cars that are needed to fill orders, he said.
“So you’ve got the issue with the raw materials coming in. You’ve got the issue of getting empty cars in and then you got issues in terms of getting stuff out,” Nighbor said.
The disruption in rail service caused by anti-pipeline protesters is having a significant impact on some Canadian industries, costing millions and damaging Canada’s reputation as a supplier of goods, industry leaders say. (Lars Hagberg/The Canadian Press)
Grain businesses as well are being significantly impacted, said Wade Sobkowich, executive director of the Western Grain Elevator Association.
“If the blockade were to lift today, it would have cost the grain industry over $10 million just over the last few days,” he said.
The effects can be long-lasting, and end up pushing sales outside peak price periods, which hurts farmers’ bottom lines, he said.
“We have farmers who are needing to deliver product. They’re needing to sell it into the handling system so that they can get paid, so that they can pay bills and keep cash flow going on their farms,” he said.
When Canada is unable to to reliably supply product to customers, the country looks like “a banana republic,” he said.
A First Nations protester walks over the train tracks in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory near Belleville, Ont., in support of Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs who oppose the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline in northern B.C. (Lars Hagberg/Canadian Press)
Brendan Marshall, vice-president of the Mining Association of Canada, said his industry relies on rail services for two reasons: bringing essential products to the site so that the mine can operate, and bringing mined products to the market.
Marshall said he has spoken with companies in British Columbia, the Prairies, Ontario and Quebec.
“And the messages that I’m hearing are the same. That is, these blockades are creating a total shutdown of service for the areas and traffic that moves on those lines,” he said.
Companies have curtailed production, have been running out of storage space and have lost sales. Marshall said.
“At the end of the day, you have threats to operational viability. You have significant and mounting economic losses for companies as well as the Canadian economy writ large,” Marshall said.
He said the next threshold of losses “would be catastrophic” — meaning operations are no longer viable and are forced to shut down.
“My members’ priority is avoiding that situation at all costs,” Marshall said. “But they have limited options at their disposal. And the biggest thing causing this distress is disrupted rail service.”
GATINEAU, Que. – A court order obtained by the Competition Bureau will require legal-software company Dye & Durham Ltd. to release records related to its business practices, the federal watchdog agency said Thursday.
It’s the latest development in an ongoing Competition Bureau probe, which aims to determine if Toronto-based Dye & Durham has engaged in anti-competitive behaviour and abused its dominant position in the market.
The bureau is examining what it calls certain Dye & Durham practices that may prevent competing software firms from supplying products or services to legal practitioners.
While no conclusion of wrongdoing has been made, the Competition Bureau said in a news release Thursday it is seeking information from the public to advance its investigation. It said it welcomes feedback from legal-software users and providers.
Dye & Durham’s stock price immediately sank on the news, and was down more than 17 per cent as of midday trading Thursday.
In a news release, Dye & Durham said it is fully co-operating with the Competition Bureau’s investigation and will “continue to take steps to inform and educate the bureau on its business and industry practices.”
The company went on to say it is concerned the Competition Bureau may be acting on allegations from industry competitors who have “resisted productivity enhancing innovation.”
It said it is also concerned the bureau’s allegations “improperly contextualize” commercial relationships and standard software industry business practices.
At the same time it is being investigated for potential anticompetitive behaviour, Dye & Durham has been trying to defend itself against an aggressive activist investor.
New York-based Engine LLP, which owns approximately 7.1 per cent of the company’s stock, has proposed its own slate of rival candidates for election to Dye & Durham’s board of directors at its upcoming annual general meeting.
Engine said this week that a boardroom overhaul is warranted at Dye & Durham after what it called “years of disappointing shareholder returns, value-destructive M&A, high employee turnover, inappropriate executive compensation and anti-shareholder action.”
Dye & Durham responded by saying that Engine’s attempt at a wholesale replacement of the board and management team puts the company’s “extraordinary track record and future trajectory at risk.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
MONTREAL – One of the lawyers for a Quebec man who was acquitted Wednesday of a decades-old double murder hopes her client’s case will convince other wrongfully convicted people not to lose hope.
For the first time in more than 40 years, Claude Paquin woke up today as a completely free man after Quebec’s Crown prosecutor’s office declined to try him for a second time for the 1978 murders of Ronald Bourgouin and Sylvie Revah.
Lawyer Julie Harinen describes the result as “historic and exceptional” because so few murder convictions are overturned in Quebec.
Paquin was first convicted of the murders in 1983, his appeal was unsuccessful, and he served 18 years in detention before being granted parole.
Project Innocence Quebec took up his case, and this year federal Justice Minister Arif Virani ordered a new trial after concluding there were reasonable grounds to conclude that a miscarriage of justice likely occurred.
Harinen says the prosecutor’s decision to drop the case was based on new evidence that emerged, including that the informant who served as the main witness against Paquin changed his story and received money and favours in return for testimony.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
A resident of British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast says a rare tornado that she saw touch down on Monday was like a scene out of a movie with trees coming down “like dominoes” in the high winds.
Western University’s Northern Tornadoes Project, which tracks storm events across Canada, has confirmed that what Lynn Smith captured on video during the windstorms that hit much of the B.C. coast was a tornado, with wind speeds of 115 km/h.
Smith says she turned on the camera hoping to send a tongue-in-cheek clip to a relative about the “beautiful day” outside Sechelt, where she regularly travels from her home in Halfmoon Bay.
Smith says stormy weather in the region isn’t out of the ordinary but when she saw a “big, healthy” tree come down, she knew something wasn’t right.
The footage captured by Smith from her car shows winds whipping up forest debris as a tree falls across the road and she gasps in disbelief.
Smith says she was worried someone was injured and called 911 when she turned around, flashing her lights at oncoming traffic to warn them of the downed trees.
Northern Tornadoes Project executive director David Sills says the team is still awaiting satellite imagery data on the tornado event.
The Sechelt tornado is only the second recorded by the project in B.C. this year, after one that occurred over Mabel Lake in the B.C. Interior in August.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
