Western Ontario spared worst impacts of rail blockades

By Connor Lynch and Patrick Meagher
EXETER — Six rail containers filled with IP soybeans sat in a warehouse at Ondrejicka Elevators for three weeks as protestors blocked several Ontario rail lines last month. The containers were finally whisked away from the Exeter-area plant on March 2, said elevator manager Bill Rundle. They only lost time, he said.

Western Ontario was spared the worst of the pain from the rail blockades that locked down freight across the country. Agris Co-op agronomist Dale Cowan said that if blockades were to continue into the spring, they could cause delays on inputs like potash. But by early March farmers and agri-businesses weren’t feeling the hurt.

The hog sector relies on rail service but Ontario Pork chair Eric Schwindt said that by early March the shutdown had minimal impact at the farm-level. “If we get this resolved quickly, we’ll manage our way through it,” he said.

The initial protests started after the RCMP began enforcing a court order in British Columbia to clear the way for a coastal pipeline. All 20 native bands in the area are in favour of the project, so as demonstrations continued across the country, more and more people began wondering if the illegal blockades were really about indigenous rights or more about environmentalism and anarchy. Many protestors are non-native.

The situation was so bad that the Canadian Federation of Agriculture said on Feb. 25 that it was approaching a “tipping point,” and that the protests were costing the grain sector as much as $63 million per week.

CN Rail reported the day before that 184 trains were parked and unable to move. About 1,500 CN and VIA Rail workers have been laid off. Trains were cancelled for about 100,000 VIA rail passengers.

On March 2, however, CN reported that trains were moving at five blockade sites in Ontario and B.C. In Eastern Ontario, elevator operator Kevin Wilson said the rail shutdown had cost him $165,000 from Feb. 16 to Feb. 27, about $15,000 per day. Speaking with Farmers Forum on Feb. 27, he said “We’ve got US $3.4 million in grain on rails supposed to be in Vancouver. It’s a nightmare.”

That same day, 52 ships at Vancouver and Prince Rupert were waiting to be filled with grain. The ships charge fees for each day they sit idle, Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Mary Robinson said. That cost comes “directly out of farmers’ pockets at a cash-pressed time.”

Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Keith Currie said in a statement that the blockades will have a bigger impact by spring if the situation isn’t resolved. Soybeans have been unable to move and many ethanol plants have stopped accepting corn deliveries since they can’t ship out ethanol. Pork producers have been impacted because most Ontario pork is exported. The shutdown has also cut off propane shipments, he added.

Said Currie: “These serious economic impacts to product delivery and production are being compounded every day and will take weeks to recover from the days of disruption that have already taken place.”

The Ontario Federation of Agriculture, along with a dozen other farm groups, penned an open letter to the federal government on Feb. 20 that stated: “We acknowledge that Indigenous Canadians have the right to protest, but these concerns and protests must not endanger the health and livelihoods of Canadians who have no part in the issues being protested.”