Ottawa won’t be rushed to end CP Rail strike, PM says

M O N T R E A L • The Canadian government won’t be rushed into introducing back-towork legislation like the Conservatives did to favour employers, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday, hours before the possible start of another Canadian railway strike.

“Quite frankly, we have companies that have gotten used to the fact that in certain industries, the government in the past was very quick to legislate against unions,” he said during a conference in Toronto. “We are not going to do that.”

Trudeau said the government believes in collective bargaining but will use various levers to motivate both sides to reach a settlement.

However, if it is eventually forced to intervene, the Liberal government won’t be giving the advantage to employers, he said.

“I can tell you we will also look at legislation to deal with some of the issues that the unions are talking about, which are not just about money but are about rail safety for employees.”

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. workers were set to strike as of 10 p.m. EDT Tuesday night, potentially forcing the railroad to shut down its freight service and leaving commuters with the prospect of delays in the country’s three largest cities.

The unions representing about 3,000 train operators and 360 signalling workers — the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — gave the railway notice over the weekend that they plan to strike. “We are still negotiating and still hopeful we will achieve a deal however we are not there yet,” IBEW senior general chairman Steve Martin wrote Tuesday.

The Calgary-based railway said it would keep meeting with union representatives, but the unions have accused the company of “refusing to negotiate seriously.”

“Negotiations are ongoing and we are still waiting for CP to show up with a serious offer,” Teamsters rail conference spokesman Christopher Monette wrote in an email.

He said a strike will begin unless a negotiated settlement is reached. “We are willing to remain at the bargaining table up until the strike deadline and beyond.”

Shippers say they expect talks will fail, resulting in the third CP Rail strike since 2012. The strike threat comes at a particularly bad time for grain farmers, whose livelihoods are threatened because grain shipping was severely disrupted over the past winter due to extreme cold.

The federal government passed the wide-ranging Transportation Modernization Act last week that includes financial penalties for railways that fail to deliver promised rail cars for grain shipments on time.