From the new cars we drive to the food we put on our tables, pandemic fatigued consumers are about to feel even more pain coming down the line because of the work stoppage at CP Rail.
“Our distribution chain is hemorrhaging right now and it’s affecting everybody,” said Mike Tucker, a business and economics professor at Fanshawe College in London, Ont.
“We can’t just sit at home having dinner and thinking ‘this isn’t affecting us.’ It affects you when you go to the grocery store. It affects you when you go to the gas pump. It affects you when you buy a car.”
The strike, involving nearly 3,000 engineers, train conductors and other employees, took effect Sunday morning.
According to the Teamsters union, there are 120 members in the London region’s local. Pickets were set up Monday in London, Woodstock, and Cambridge.
Tucker said the labor dispute comes at a time when the Canadian economy continues to struggle with supply chain issues.
“Transportation costs for all companies relying on any sort of transportation to get their products from the raw suppliers has gone up dramatically. Now you take the train industry into a stalling situation for a day or even a week or more, and that’s like a back-breaker on the distribution chain,” said Tucker.
Agriculture is expected to be among the industries hardest hit. That’s because eastern Ontario, as well as Québec and the Atlantic provinces, import raw materials for fertilizer from Russia, now facing economic sanctions. Also, most of the domestic supply comes from Western Canada, and mainly by rail.
“Eighty to 85 per cent of the nitrogen products that are used in fertilizer, they’re imported, and primarily that has been from Russia,” said Karen Proud, president and CEO of Fertilizer Canada. “So, there’s a double hit here being taken by our eastern provinces where they can’t get what traditionally they count on, and when they look for supply domestically, they’re not going to be able to get that either.”
In the meantime, President of the Oxford County Federation of Agriculture, Dirk Boogerd, tells CTV News in an email that the timing of the strike is “unfortunate” with spring planting around the corner.
He went on to say “short term we should be ok with much of the fertilizer already in Ontario and Oxford county, but if the strike lasts long-term, weeks into months, it certainly becomes a great concern for us.”