The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU Canada) — which represents about 7,400 workers at various Vancouver and Prince Rupert port terminals and facilities — said Tuesday its members had returned to the picket lines late that afternoon, after a caucus of ILWU Canada leadership rejected a federal mediators’ proposal for a four-year agreement.

But the CIRB, in a ruling Wednesday morning, said it had since received an application from the B.C. Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) — which represents port employers in collective bargaining — seeking a declaration of an “unlawful strike.”

The BCMEA had argued 72 hours’ notice should be given before strike action could resume, while ILWU Canada argued “no such notice was required since there was an ongoing strike,” the CIRB said.

The board said Wednesday it considered both sides’ submissions and has now ruled the resumption of strike action to be unlawful. The CIRB has ordered the union to “cease and desist from participating in strike activities” until the relevant terms of the federal Labour Code are met.

Until then, the CIRB said, all striking longshore workers must now “immediately perform the duties of their employment as per the collective agreement and applicable dispatch rules.”

In other words, federal Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan said in a tweet Wednesday morning, “This strike is illegal.”

In response, ILWU Canada said later Wednesday morning it will appeal the CIRB ruling and served the employer group with a fresh 72-hour notice, which would restart the strike on Saturday (July 22).

Hours later, however, ILWU Canada president Rob Ashton published a memo saying the union’s strike notice, which would put the start time on July 22 at 9 a.m. PT, “has now been removed.”

The memo gave no reason for the removal. The BCMEA, in a separate statement later Wednesday, acknowledged the removal, saying “the past 24 hours have demonstrated that this continues to be a fluid and unpredictable situation.”

O’Regan and federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra, in a separate statement late Tuesday night, said they were now “looking at all options” and “will have more to say on this tomorrow.”

ILWU Canada’s B.C. port members had gone on strike starting July 1, returning to work when the tentative deal was announced last Thursday. The ministers said late Tuesday they’d since been informed by the BCMEA that its employer members “accepted this deal in full.”

However, the ministers said, “we were also informed that, despite initially agreeing to recommend the terms of settlement, the ILWU Canada’s leadership had decided not to recommend ratification of the terms to their members.”

The ministers, in Tuesday’s statement, did not list their remaining options, nor did they use the phrase ‘back-to-work legislation’ — an option which would involve recalling Parliament off its summer break.

But they did say “workers and employers across Canada cannot face further disruption on the scale we saw last week… We have been patient. We have respected the collective bargaining process. But we need our ports operating.”

Service for bulk grain vessels at West Coast ports is exempt from any longshore work stoppage under the federal Labour Code.

Several farmer and ag industry groups have been publicly calling for federal action to end the strike, however, as containerized pulse crops, perishables such as meat and produce, fertilizer and other goods face potential delays.

The BCMEA said Wednesday the strike to date has “caused immense damage to Canada’s trading reputation and disrupted at least $10 billion worth of cargo alone.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The B.C. Maritime Employers Association said in a release Thursday morning it had reached a tentative pact with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU Canada) on a new four-year collective agreement “that recognizes the skills and efforts of B.C.’s waterfront workforce.”

The deal ending a 13-day strike came after federal Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan on Tuesday night tasked federally appointed mediators with drafting terms for a new agreement based on progress made in talks to date.

O’Regan had set a deadline of Thursday evening for the union and management to decide whether the mediator’s terms were acceptable.

He and federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra, in a joint statement Thursday, said the ILWU and BCMEA are now “finalizing details for the resumption of work at the ports.”

BCMEA said Thursday morning it’s “committed to working closely with ILWU Canada and their locals and supply chain partners to safely resume operations as soon as possible.”

Thanking federal mediator Peter Simpson and his team as well as O’Regan for their help in reaching the tentative deal, the employer group said it “recognizes and regrets the significant impact this labour disruption has had on the economy, businesses, workers, customers and ultimately, all Canadians.”

Parties at Vancouver and Prince Rupert now “must collectively work together to not only restore cargo operations as quickly and safely as possible but to also rebuild the reputation of Canada’s largest gateway and ensure supply chain stability and resilience for the future,” BCMEA said.

O’Regan and Alghabra, in their statement Thursday, concurred that the scale of the disruption at the West Coast has been “significant” and “has shown just how important the relationship between industry and labour is to our national interest. Our supply chains and our economy depend on it.”

Service for bulk grain vessels and cruise ships at B.C.’s ports was exempt from this work stoppage. However, several farmer and ag industry groups had publicly called for federal action to end the strike, as containerized pulse crops, perishables such as meat and produce, fertilizer and other goods were potentially at risk from delays.

Past that, Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters (CME) said in a separate release Thursday the strike “has caused severe backlogs that will take weeks to process. The damage to manufacturing supply chains is significant, as production slowed in the lead-up to the strike and will take even more time to get back up and running.”

CME said it’s been estimated that a day of a port shutdown takes up to a week to make up, “meaning it will take months for the sector to recover.”

O’Regan and Alghabra emphasized Thursday that “deals like this, made between parties at the collective bargaining table…are the best way to preserve the long-term stability of Canada’s economy” and “we do not want to be back here again.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The task force’s final report, released Oct. 6, offered up 21 recommendations aimed at easing congestion in Canada’s ports, filling labour shortages and improving employee retention, and protecting corridors, border crossings and gateways from disruption.

Among the report’s short-term recommendations, for example, are a call to expand the 30-kilometre rail interswitch distance across Canada — a move meant to give shippers more options to move goods by rail on one company’s track before switching to another for the longer haul.

Among the longer-term recommendations, meanwhile, are a call to “protect corridors, border crossings and gateways from disruptions to ensure unfettered access for commercial transportation modes and continuity of supply chain movement.”

Among the bullet points tucked into that recommendation is a call for Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan to “urgently convene a council of experts to develop a new collaborative labour relations paradigm that would reduce the likelihood of strikes, threat of strikes, or lockouts that risk the operation or fluidity of the national transportation supply chain.”

On that point, the task force says “employers, unions and government must find creative solutions to avoid disrupting the supply chain” as “even the threat of strikes or lockouts negatively affects the operation of the national transportation supply chain and, in turn, Canada’s reputation as a destination of choice for doing business.”

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said Oct. 6 the government will now move to develop a National Supply Chain Strategy, which “will be informed by the recommendations included in the task force’s final report.”

Among the organizations responding to the task force report’s release, the Teamsters Union said Oct. 6 it’s “pleased” with the recommendations to help fill vacancies in the transport sector.

“However, and just as importantly, the union is alarmed by the report’s language surrounding the right to strike,” the union said.

“Free collective bargaining is not an impediment to supply chain continuity, but this report suggests otherwise,” Teamsters Canada president Francois Laporte said in a release. “Ultimately, unions and everyday working-class Canadian families are not at the source of the world’s current disruptions. Attacking our rights won’t solve the crisis.”

The union said it believes the government’s responsibility is to “create the environment where workers and employers can negotiate freely, without interference, and in good faith.”

“It is wholly unacceptable for the task force to have considered ‘labour disputes’ as events requiring risk-mitigation strategies, on par with climate-related events,” Unifor national president Lana Payne said separately in a letter to Alghabra.

“Limiting worker power by curtailing the rights of workers to strike would contribute to the erosion of job quality, destabilizing the transportation supply chain further — the opposite of what the task force was set up to accomplish.”

Rather, Unifor said, “decades of industry deregulation combined with other anti-labour activities, such as contract flipping and contracting out, have contributed to the recruitment and retention issues plaguing critical parts of the sector.”

“That such a recommendation should surface through a government-appointed task force — in an advanced, pluralist, progressive democratic nation such as Canada — is incredulous,” Payne said in her letter to Alghabra.

“A stable, secure, and skilled workforce must stand atop the list of priorities for anyone looking to solidify supply chains. Sadly, job quality is noticeably absent from the list of action items in the task force’s final report.”

The last major disruptions caused by rail labour disputes in Canada were an eight-day strike by Teamsters-led conductors and yard workers at Canadian National Railway (CN) in 2019, and a three-day labour outage at Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) in March this year involving the company’s Teamsters-led engineers, conductors and train and yard workers.

CN’s signals and communications workers, led by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) System Council 11, also held a 17-day strike this summer but did not actively disrupt CN service during that time.

Among other recommendations to limit supply chain disruptions, the task force report also calls for Canada’s law enforcement agencies and judiciary to be provided with “tools and resources to pre-empt blockades and/or expeditiously remove individuals or objects intending to be used to disrupt nationally critical transportation supply chain infrastructure or operations.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Proposed amendments to the Grade Crossings Regulations, announced June 18 by Transport Minister Omar Alghabra, this week cleared their 30-day public comment period.

The amendments are expected to tweak rules which were put in place in 2014 to improve safety at grade crossings — and which required railways, public road authorities and owners of private crossings to comply with requirements for existing crossings by no later than Nov. 28 this year.

Given that fast-approaching deadline, Prairie farm groups in December last year called on Ottawa to grant extensions — and to see to it that farmers wouldn’t be left footing the bills for upgrades on their properties.

The COVID-19 pandemic, Alghabra said in June, “has resulted in widespread financial hardship, including for local governments and private owners of grade crossings.”

Transport Canada’s proposed amendments, he said, instead “will focus efforts on reducing the risks of preventable accidents at grade crossings while being mindful of the economic realities.”

The need for extensions and exemptions has come up in the past few years, partly on “the challenges in obtaining safety-related information” on specific grade crossings, Transport Canada said in a regulatory impact analysis in tbe Canada Gazette for the new amendments.

And from the outset of the 2014 regulations’ intended seven-year compliance period, Transport Canada said, the bulk of the work to bring grade crossings up to requirements was expected to happen toward the end of a “five-year municipal planning cycle” — in other words, in the summers of 2020 and 2021.

Then the pandemic “led to the loss of the entire 2020 construction season,” on top of which affected municipalities now face “budget constraints, declining revenues and public health priorities, and lack the financial resources to invest in required upgrades.”

Thus, with the deadline coming up this fall, about 85 per cent of existing public crossings are “currently not compliant with the upgrade requirements.”

New deadlines

Alghabra’s amendments set new compliance deadlines “based on the various levels of risks posed by grade crossings.”

Specifically, the amendments grant a one-year extension for “existing public grade crossings which present a higher risk” — and a three-year extension for all other public and all private grade crossings.

That puts the new deadlines at Nov. 28, 2022 and 2024 respectively.

But for landowners and others who have “very low-risk” grade crossings where rail lines cut across their land — such as “field-to-field crossings with minimal train traffic” — Alghabra’s amendments grant “exclusion” altogether from the Grade Crossings Regulations’ construction and maintenance requirements.

In some cases, railways have had agreements with farmers and other landowners that would have left those landowners on the hook for up to 100 per cent of the costs for the required upgrades, Transport Canada said.

Over the last year, the department said, both Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railways (CN, CP) had started to write to affected landowners informing them of upcoming bills for work on their crossings — some of which “can reach as much as $200,000 in cases where warning signals are involved.”

These bills from the railways “have attracted considerable media attention, and some of the stakeholders have indicated that they were not properly informed of the upcoming November 2021 compliance deadline.”

The railways, Transport Canada said, replied that they were up against delays, both in determining the required upgrades at those crossings and identifying and informing the private crossing owners.

As of last month, just 22 per cent of private crossings are considered fully compliant.

However, Transport Canada said it now has “significantly more data than it did when the Regulations were initially developed,” so the department “was able to establish an objective set of criteria that would capture grade crossings that present a very low risk.”

With that, the department estimates, 3,420 grade crossings that were subject to the upgrade requirements could be exempted, including 3,022 private and 398 public crossings, at a total cost savings of about $10.85 million to the railways, road authorities and landowners involved.

That’s out of between 4,000 and 10,000 federally regulated private grade crossings estimated across Canada — about 70 per cent of which are in Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario.

Alghabra’s amendments would “alleviate concerns from private landowners facing large expenditures for upgrading crossings that are subject to minimal traffic levels,” the department said.

It’s also expected the amendments would “reduce pressure” on the Canadian Transportation Agency to mediate any “existing and potential disputes between railway companies and landowners” over who pays how much for the upgrades.

All that said, Transport Canada cautioned that if any stakeholders make changes that raise a grade crossing’s risk level — for example, increasing train speed or average daily traffic on a given rail line — they’ll need to make sure those upgrades are made within the new time frames, or, after those time frames expire, before they go through with the risk-level changes in question.

In the meantime, Transport Canada said last month it will reach out to farmer associations, municipalities and road authorities to “clearly communicate the proposed amendments” and encourage “co-operation and sharing of information” with the railways. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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“With extreme weather events occurring more severely and frequently in Canada due to climate change, it is important to have an adaptive regulatory system that responds to these new risks,” the government said Sunday in a release.

The new order “will put in place interim measures while (Transport Canada) works with railway companies to incorporate these fire risk reduction measures on a permanent basis into the existing regulatory framework for railway operations in Canada.”

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra’s order, in effect as of midnight PT on Saturday, requires Class 1 railways in Canada — that is, Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway — to cut their train speeds wherever air temperature is above 30 C combined with an “extreme” fire danger level.

Specifically, when air temperature is 30 to 32 C and extreme fire danger level is declared, CN and CP must reduce train speeds to 25 miles per hour on track where permitted speeds are between 26 and 35 mph. On track where the allowed speed is 36 mph or faster, trains in those areas must reduce speed by 10 mph.

If air temperature rises to 33 C or higher in extreme fire danger areas, Class 1 trains must cut speeds to 25 mph on track where the permitted speed is 26 to 50 mph, and to 30 mph where permitted track speed is 51 mph or faster.

The order also requires CN and CP, until Oct. 31, to ensure no train runs in areas of extreme fire danger level, unless a train has been inspected in the previous 15 days to ensure the locomotive’s exhaust passages are clear of combustible material.

The “combustible material” includes any oil accumulation or any “carbonaceous deposits” thicker than 1/8 inch (three millimetres).

The order also calls for CN and CP to develop “interim extreme weather fire risk mitigation plans” within 14 days — addressing, “at a minimum,” fire detection, monitoring and response measures. Those plans must be communicated to municipal and other orders of government, including Indigenous governing bodies

The order also requires CN and CP to complete and implement “final extreme weather fire risk mitigation plans” within 60 days from the date of the order.

‘Suppression capacity’

Saturday’s order follows a previous order that halted all trains on CN’s and CP’s subdivisions through the Kamloops, B.C. area over the weekend, ahead of an authorized tour Friday by evacuated residents to the largely-destroyed village of Lytton, about 160 km southwest of Kamloops.

The government, he said Sunday, “remains committed to supporting those affected by the devastating wildfires in British Columbia and will not hesitate to take any safety actions that are necessary to mitigate these risks to public safety and the integrity of railway tracks and infrastructure.”

The new order also puts more onus on CN and CP to watch for fires along tracks on their respective Ashcroft and Thompson subdivisions in the Kamloops area specifically.

Until Oct. 31, if operating when the fire danger level in the area of those subdivisions is deemed extreme, CN and CP must “incorporate the deployment of fire suppression capacity into their operations that will ensure a 60-minute response time to any fires detected along the right of way of the subdivisions.”

That added capacity, the order said, is meant to take steps to “extinguish or control” a reported fire, or to notify the fire service for the area “if the fire cannot be controlled without assistance.”

In those subdivisions, a conductor on any train will be responsible for spotting for fires and reporting any fires or “smouldering areas” to rail traffic control.

Any “vegetation control” work done along those tracks must be followed by “removal of combustible materials,” the order said.

CN and CP must also make sure “at least 10” fire detection patrols are run on those subdivisions every 24 hours, “unless a train has not operated on the relevant subdivision for a period of at least three hours.”

Saturday’s order also followed an announcement Friday from the federal Transportation Safety Board that it was deploying a team of investigators “following a fire potentially involving a freight train in Lytton, British Columbia.”

CN and CP last Thursday in separate statements pledged $1.5 million and $1 million respectively to wildfire relief efforts in the Lytton area.

The Ag Transport Coalition, which monitors Prairie grain movement by rail on behalf of member grain organizations and industry players, on Wednesday last week reported a “slowdown in operations as a result of the wildfires in the vicinity of Lytton.”

The coalition had reported “the closure of main lines for both CN and CP south of Kamloops effectively cutting off all access to and from the Port of Vancouver” at the time.

“We continue to expect an extended recovery time given the magnitude of the outage and the recognition that this disruption has impacted all commodity traffic, not just grain,” the coalition said. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced the order late Thursday, ahead of an authorized tour Friday by evacuated residents to the largely-destroyed village of Lytton, about 160 km southwest of Kamloops.

The order, he said, “is being put in place in the interest of safe railway operations and to protect residents who are temporarily returning to inspect their homes as safely as possible.”

The order requires CN and CP to “cease movement of trains except for emergency fire response, and maintenance and repair work” on their Ashcroft and Thompson subdivisions respectively, both of which run between Kamloops and Boston Bar, about 45 km south of Lytton.

Trains already in those subdivisions when the order comes into force “are permitted to navigate the subdivisions for the purposes of exiting.”

Asked Thursday — before Alghabra’s order was announced — about rail service through the affected region in the wake of fires, a CP representative said its mainline railway operations had “safely resumed” Monday afternoon. Response hadn’t yet been received from CN as of Friday morning.

“The safety of the public and our employees is our priority and we are implementing appropriate measures, such as increased inspections of our tracks and equipment, during this period of extreme weather,” CP said via email, noting its crews had completed safety inspections of tracks and infrastructure before rail operations restarted.

CP also said its crews “closely monitor conditions and continually watch for signs of wildfires. If spotted, any indication of a wildfire is immediately relayed to authorities.”

The decision comes amid media reports in which community leaders around Lytton cite unconfirmed reports that local train traffic sparked the fires.

The federal Transportation Safety Board later Friday said it deployed teams of investigators to Lytton and to the southeastern B.C. community of Sparwood, about 30 km northeast of Fernie. In its statements, the TSB said it was investigating a fire at Sparwood involving a freight train, while the Lytton fire was “potentially involving a freight train.”

The Ag Transport Coalition, which monitors Prairie grain movement by rail on behalf of member grain organizations and industry players, on Wednesday reported a “slowdown in operations as a result of the wildfires in the vicinity of Lytton.”

The coalition had reported “the closure of main lines for both CN and CP south of Kamloops effectively cutting off all access to and from the Port of Vancouver.”

“We continue to expect an extended recovery time given the magnitude of the outage and the recognition that this disruption has impacted all commodity traffic, not just grain,” the coalition said, noting over 2,600 cars, or about 80 per cent of all idle cars, were in the Vancouver rail corridor. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Trudeau’s hand was forced when Innovations Minister Navdeep Bains, 43, unexpectedly announced he was resigning from politics for family reasons. Bains, who has two school-age daughters and had been in the job since November 2015, was a senior minister from Ontario, a Liberal stronghold.

Canadian prime ministers traditionally shuffle their team if a cabinet member says they will not run in the next election.

Francois-Philippe Champagne, 50, will leave the foreign ministry to take over for Bains. Marc Garneau, 71, moved from transport to become Canada’s fourth foreign minister in just over four years.

Garneau’s main tasks will be establishing relations with the incoming Biden administration in the U.S. and handling a major diplomatic dispute with China.

One of Champagne’s first jobs will be to decide whether to allow China’s Huawei Technologies to supply next-generation equipment for 5G networks. Liberal sources say Ottawa will ban Huawei gear but is keeping silent so as not to anger Beijing.

Omar Alghabra, 51, will replace Garneau at transport and Winnipeg MP Jim Carr rejoins cabinet as a special representative for the Prairies, where the Liberals failed to win seats in the last election.

Alghabra, a backbench Liberal MP for Mississauga (2006-08, 2015-present), now takes responsibility for federal transport policy, significant to rail-dependent Prairie grain growers and to exporters moving Canadian commodities overseas.

A mechanical engineer by profession, he has previously served in several parliamentary secretary posts, including international trade diversification and consular affairs.

Carr, 69, had been minister for international trade diversification heading into the October 2019 federal election, but stepped down from cabinet at that time to undergo cancer treatment.

Trudeau said last week there could well be an election this year but stressed he wanted to stay in office to focus on the coronavirus epidemic.

— Reporting for Reuters by Steve Scherer and David Ljunggren in Ottawa. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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