By Carlo Dade
Published in The Hill Times

August 29, 2024

Two-thirds of Canada’s GDP comes from moving goods in and out of the country, yet our current system does not consider this essential.

“Here we are again,” and “This time is different“ are not words that inspire confidence in the system that brought us to the point where both railroads are on strike less than a year after the nation’s largest port was shut down, a few months after a stoppage at one national airline, and months before a looming stoppage at the other.

Yet, the hope that this time will be different may be all that we have, for better or worse.

As with the port strike, the government stepped in to send the parties to binding arbitration, and media and public attention will eventually move on—until the next strike. The one thing that may be different this time is that the impacts of the strike went beyond farmers, loggers, and potash miners in remote communities.

On the morning of the lockout on Aug. 22, tens of thousands of briefcase-toting consumers in Canada found themselves waiting for commuter rail trains that weren’t coming. Farmers waiting for trains to take their grain; commuters waiting for trains to take to the office. Now it’s been stretched longer by a strike. If not literally at least metaphorically urban and rural were, unfortunately, united for a brief moment of shared pain. That evening, Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon announced Ottawa would force binding arbitration, and now the unions have issued a 72-hour strike notice.

Rather than kicking the can down the road until the next disruption with one-off back-to-work measures, this shared pain could have been the basis for real action to reform a system of transportation governance that keeps failing the country.

“Disruptions have become a feature, not a bug,” Brian Kingston, head of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, told MPs studying the port strike in December 2023.

The accumulated evidence is overwhelming that what we have been doing isn’t working. Systemic reform, not tweaks are needed. This reality has not been lost on those outside of Ottawa.

Last summer at the Council of the Federation, the premiers unanimously called for the adoption of national trade infrastructure planning—something proposed by a coalition of leading business organizations, and something that is done by every other major exporting country but not Canada. This is step one in understanding and managing the complex, integrated, national supply and logistics system. The Prairie provinces have collaborated to put this recommendation into action, showing it is possible in Canada.

But instead of joining the premiers and listening to the private sector, the federal government has doubled down on our current way of doing business by creating a Supply Chain Management Office, another level of federal bureaucracy that will last as long as government attention.

Shuffling bureaucrats on the deck of the Titanic is not going to keep the ship afloat.

Two-thirds of Canada’s GDP comes from moving goods in and out of the country, yet our current system does not consider this essential. Instead of safeguards like binding arbitration, we have brinkmanship that holds the economy hostage. There are serious concerns like safety with rail that won’t be addressed by back-to-work legislation, hence the need for it to be included—but only as part of broader reform.

It is the job of the opposition to point this out and offer solutions to government shortcomings. But rather than pick up the ball the Liberals have dropped—raising the alarm and pressing for a more serious response—the federal opposition parties have been silent.

And so, here we are. Again.

Foreign customers have been losing patience with Canada. A supplier whose logistics system has disruption as a feature—not a flaw—is not an attractive proposition in a world where there are options. For a country that relies on trade for two-thirds of its GDP, this should be alarming. That it is not—as evinced by yet another quick fix instead of serious, systemic reform—only reinforces that message.

In the last year, the country has seen a two-week strike at its largest port costing an estimated $800-million a day, followed by an air strike stranding thousands of passengers, followed by the most recent shutdown of both national rail carriers. That latest work stoppage has stranded tens of thousands of commuters in Canada’s largest cities, with the threat of another air strike looming. If all of this does not make the most recent crisis a come-to-Jesus moment that prompts real reform, then maybe the country is beyond hope.

In that sense, this time may, unfortunately, be truly different.

Carlo Dade is director of trade and the trade infrastructure at the Canada West Foundation.