On Tuesday, grain workers at six Vancouver terminals went on strike and there is also a strike looming at the Port of Montreal. The President of the Canadian Federation of Independent business is concerned about the impact, saying Canada cannot afford another strike at any port across the country. Dan Kelly states, “For agricultural producers of course the grain terminal strike in Vancouver is having an immediate impact and even when these things get wound down, even if they are short term, they have a long tail effect.” He estimates that a single week of an outage of a critical infrastructure might take six to eight weeks for things to get back to normal, which impacts us all.

Kelly believes when it comes to critical transportation infrastructure, it should be considered an essential service, where binding arbitration is used if unions and business owners can’t come to a contract conclusion. He adds that CFIB members remember all too well the impact of the 2020 and 2021 strikes at the Port of Montreal and the 2023 strike at BC ports. The situation at the Vancouver terminals is that grain loading onto vessels is an essential service, but it doesn’t cover terminal operation grain workers, and that’s who Grain Workers Union Local 333, which is on strike right now in Vancouver, represents.