Two Alberta sawmills avoided direct rail shutdown impact

West Fraser’s Sundre and Cochrane mills are somewhat unique among the company’s divisions in that neither operation relies exclusively on rail service to ship product to market.

Jason Foote, the general manager of Sundre Forest Products, told the Albertan that the recent strike and lockout action that began when negotiations broke down between Teamsters Canada Rail Conference and Canadian National Railway (CNR) as well as Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC), had not been expected to exact any direct impact on the mills’ ability to get product on the market.

“Sundre and Cochrane are in a very similar position in that both of those mills don’t have rail service,” Foote said during a phone interview.

“As far as shipping product, those mills are going to be largely unaffected by the rail strike,” he said.

That being said, that did not mean the situation company-wide would be business as usual.

“As far as West Fraser goes as a whole, there’s a significant impact in Alberta and B.C.,” said Foote.

“Lots of our facilities ship most of their product on CN or CP and they’re going to be in big trouble” in the event of a drawn out labour dispute, he said.  

“If you look at our company as a whole, there’s significant impacts immediately. A lot of our divisions rely on rail service daily to basically get product to market,” he elaborated.

“But our division (in Sundre) – just the way that we’re situated – we don’t have a rail spur into the mill, so we’re not tied directly to having to ship rail cars,” he said, adding the same applies to the operation in Cochrane.

“Just these two mills in southern Alberta, we’re strictly truck to get our product out,” he said.

• RELATED: Teamsters take down picket lines at CN, stoppage continues at CPKC

Although the federal government has already intervened following less than one day of strike action by referring the matter to the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) for binding arbitration, Foote added that a protracted labour dispute would eventually have had the potential to cause indirect impacts on the operations in Sundre and Cochrane.

“It could impact those mills through things like supply chain parts and pieces and inputs that we need (to continue operating),” he said.

So, while the mills would have been able to move out their product by truck, “we may not get the inputs that we need to continue to run, if it was a prolonged strike.”

With the federal government’s decision to step in, a drawn out dispute now seems unlikely to happen.

In a statement posted on the official CPKC website, chief executive officer and president Keith Creel was quoted as saying the company “regrets” that the situation had reached the point of the dispute being forced into binding arbitration but that “the government had to intervene” in recognition of “the immense consequences of a railway work stoppage for the Canadian economy, North American supply chains and all Canadians.”

Expressing disappointment and calling the Liberal government’s decision “shameful,” Paul Boucher, president of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, said in a statement posted on the union’s website that “the government has allowed CN and CPKC to sidestep a union-determined (deal) to protect rail safety.”

The Teamsters has also previously said both companies are pushing to weaken protections around rest periods and scheduling, and adds that CN is also seeking a scheme that would see some employees move to far-flung locations for several months at a time to fill labour gaps.

“Despite claiming to value and honour the collective bargaining process, the federal government quickly used its authority to suspend it, mere hours after an employer-imposed work stoppage,” reads part of Boucher’s statement, going onto add that “the rights afforded to working-class Canadians” have been “once again disregarded.”

A press statement issued by the National Farmers Union in solidarity with the Teamsters said in part that “between 2013 and 2023 CN Rail’s annual net income has doubled from $2.6 billion to $5.6 billion. During the same period, CPKC’s annual net income more than tripled from $875 million to $3.9 billion.”

Will Robbins, NFU board member also said that “using farmers’ anxieties around harvest time to punish reasonable requests from railway workers is bad faith. As a farmer, I do not like being used as a bargaining chip. Railways are key infrastructure for farmers and for the production of food in Canada.”

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said in a statement the move was proof the Liberals “will always cave to corporate greed, and Canadians will always pay for it.”