The St. Lawrence Seaway strike is costing the Port of Windsor $1.3 million per day in lost economic activity, and it will only be a matter of days before local companies have difficult decisions to make that will only amplify that impact, Port Windsor CEO/president Steve Salmons said Monday.
About 360 workers who operate the locks on the Canadian side of the international seaway walked off the job at 12:01 a.m. Sunday to back their wage demands.
The Seaway corporation is contracted by the federal government to operate the system.
“As a shipping centre, we only have a certain number of days to our season,” Salmons said. “The end of December, we lose shipping and we can’t get these lost days back.
“Everyone was aware of the negotiations and there’s been some short-term preparations made for a stoppage. It’s still costing the economy $40 million per day.
“By the end of the week we’ll see some nervousness and by the end of the second week there’ll be extreme anxiety.”
The St. Lawrence Seaway is vital to North America’s commercial transportation system.
It supports 241,286 U.S. and Canadian jobs and generates $46.8 billion in annual economic activity.
Salmons said the timing of the strike is particularly troublesome for the agricultural sector. Record grain yields have been enjoyed by farmers on both sides of the border at a time when grain prices and world demand are high due to the Russia-Ukraine war.
“Grain has a limited shelf life, so there are provisions in (Canadian) law that allow for grain to be shipped during a strike,” Salmons said. “I would expect that might be the federal government’s first directive during this strike.”
The Seaway corporation has already filed a legal request to start the process to allow grain to be shipped.
Salmons said one of the local firms to be first impacted by the strike will likely be Archer-Daniels-Midland’s Windsor operation that crushes soybeans and canola for oils and handles wheat. A lot of those products are then shipped to Europe and South America.
“They buy 70 per cent of their grains and soya from farmers in Essex, Kent and Lambton counties,” Salmons said. “Once they run out of storage space, they’re going to tell the farmers they can’t buy any more of their crops.”
Salmons added the Windsor Salt Company, which has already endured a lengthy strike of its own, also can’t properly service its biggest markets in the Greater Toronto Area.
The Port of Windsor processed $400 million worth of goods last year.
In addition to grain and salt, the major goods moved by ship locally are specialty steel for the auto industry and aggregate materials for construction.
With winter approaching, the auto industry is normally stockpiling these specialty steels, which aren’t produced in North America, to last until the seaway re-opens after the cold weather.
He said the region’s large construction projects — Gordie Howe International Bridge and NextStar Energy battery plant — won’t be affected by the strike as the American-controlled Sault Ste. Marie locks are unaffected by the labour dispute.
Salmons said Windsor handled 600 ships last year and there were another 6,000 ships that passed in transit through the region.
If the work stoppage continues, he said it won’t be long before residents see ships dropping anchor in designated anchorage spots in the Detroit River and surrounding lakes.
All ships in passage through the seaway leading into the weekend were able to clear the locks given the union’s 72-hour strike notice.
For now, Salmons said his clients have told him they’ll ride out the turbulence. There have been no delays of commercial ships arriving in Windsor yet, but a European ship carrying steel for the auto industry is due to arrive locally by the end of the week.
However, HMCS Glace Bay’s week-long visit to Windsor for a marine career fair and public tours was cancelled. The ship was supposed to arrive locally Tuesday, but the Department of National Defence feared letting one of its warships sail into the western lakes and then getting trapped.
The strike isn’t just impacting major corporations.
The voice of small and medium business, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), released a statement urging the federal government to get the St. Lawrence Seaway open quickly.
“Small businesses were seriously affected by the long strike at B.C. ports and the supply chain disruptions it caused this summer,” said CFIB’s vice-president for national affairs, Jasmin Guénette.
“The last thing the Canadian economy needs right now is another strike blocking a busy trade route and impacting businesses once again. Small businesses are already dealing with inflation, labour shortages, heavy debt loads and weak demand.
“They cannot suffer from another strike that would impact their bottom line.”
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Netflix on Thursday reported that its subscriber growth slowed dramatically during the summer, a sign the huge gains from the video-streaming service’s crackdown on freeloading viewers is tapering off.
The 5.1 million subscribers that Netflix added during the July-September period represented a 42% decline from the total gained during the same time last year. Even so, the company’s revenue and profit rose at a faster pace than analysts had projected, according to FactSet Research.
Netflix ended September with 282.7 million worldwide subscribers — far more than any other streaming service.
The Los Gatos, California, company earned $2.36 billion, or $5.40 per share, a 41% increase from the same time last year. Revenue climbed 15% from a year ago to $9.82 billion. Netflix management predicted the company’s revenue will rise at the same 15% year-over-year pace during the October-December period, slightly than better than analysts have been expecting.
The strong financial performance in the past quarter coupled with the upbeat forecast eclipsed any worries about slowing subscriber growth. Netflix’s stock price surged nearly 4% in extended trading after the numbers came out, building upon a more than 40% increase in the company’s shares so far this year.
The past quarter’s subscriber gains were the lowest posted in any three-month period since the beginning of last year. That drop-off indicates Netflix is shifting to a new phase after reaping the benefits from a ban on the once-rampant practice of sharing account passwords that enabled an estimated 100 million people watch its popular service without paying for it.
The crackdown, triggered by a rare loss of subscribers coming out of the pandemic in 2022, helped Netflix add 57 million subscribers from June 2022 through this June — an average of more than 7 million per quarter, while many of its industry rivals have been struggling as households curbed their discretionary spending.
Netflix’s gains also were propelled by a low-priced version of its service that included commercials for the first time in its history. The company still is only getting a small fraction of its revenue from the 2-year-old advertising push, but Netflix is intensifying its focus on that segment of its business to help boost its profits.
In a letter to shareholder, Netflix reiterated previous cautionary notes about its expansion into advertising, though the low-priced option including commercials has become its fastest growing segment.
“We have much more work to do improving our offering for advertisers, which will be a priority over the next few years,” Netflix management wrote in the letter.
As part of its evolution, Netflix has been increasingly supplementing its lineup of scripted TV series and movies with live programming, such as a Labor Day spectacle featuring renowned glutton Joey Chestnut setting a world record for gorging on hot dogs in a showdown with his longtime nemesis Takeru Kobayashi.
Netflix will be trying to attract more viewer during the current quarter with a Nov. 15 fight pitting former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson against Jake Paul, a YouTube sensation turned boxer, and two National Football League games on Christmas Day.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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