FEDS MUST MOVE QUICKLY TO END LABOUR DISPUTE AT PORT OF MONTREAL: PROVINCES.
Quebec, Ontario want feds to settle conflict
MONTREAL • Canada’s two most populous provinces are demanding that Ottawa move to quickly settle the labour conflict at the Port of Montreal.
About 1,100 port longshoremen represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees began an indefinite strike Monday at 7 a.m. It’s the second work stoppage at the port since last summer, following a 10day walkout in August.
“Given the inability (of management and the union) to come to an agreement, it is imperative that you do not exclude any option to settle this conflict, and that as quickly as possible,” reads a letter signed by members of the Quebec and Ontario governments — including the economy and labour ministers — sent to federal Labour Minister Filomena Tassi.
A speedy resolution is imperative “not only for the success of the port, but for the sake of the economic recovery of Quebec, Ontario and all of Canada,” they said.
The appeal comes hours after Tassi announced Sunday evening on social media that the federal government will table back-to-work legislation in the event of a strike. A meeting between both parties — led by Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service officials — began at 9 a.m. Monday.
“We’re here to encourage negotiation, but we cannot accept that there be massive economic damage to Quebecers and Canadians,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sunday night in an interview on the Ici Radio-canada TV talk show Tout le monde en parle.
“Every day that there is a work stoppage, we see small companies across Quebec suffer because they’re not getting their goods, and we see companies decide to route their order through the Port of Boston or the U.S. because in their minds, Montreal is not dependable,” he said.
The earliest that the legislation can be tabled is Tuesday, Lars Wessman, a spokesperson for Tassi, said Monday. Trudeau and his Liberal Party government would need support from at least one opposition party to get the legislation adopted because they don’t control a majority of seats in the House of Commons.
Bloc Québécois leader Yves-françois Blanchet on Monday urged the prime minister “to pick up his phone” and demand that the Maritime Employers Association and the union make temporary concessions to keep the port operating “as long as the pandemic has not been contained” while the mediation process continues.
The Bloc opposes backto-work legislation, “which is an admission of incompetence and a lack of leadership,” Blanchet said. The Bloc will ask for an emergency debate on the dispute to be held in the House of Commons, he said.
Supply chains across Quebec and Canada — already disrupted by COVID-19 — could start feeling the impact of the walkout within a matter of days, said Véronique Proulx, CEO of Manufacturiers et Exportateurs du Québec, which represents 1,100 manufacturers.
“Some companies wrote to us this weekend to say they can probably wait a week. After that, they won’t have access to their raw materials, their components, their spare parts,” Proulx told the Montreal Gazette in a telephone interview. “Others fear their exports are going to be stranded at the port. Delays already exist because of the pandemic, so every day that the work stoppage continues is only going to pile on the pressure.”.
Negotiations between the union and the Maritime Employers Association have dragged on since the union’s contract expired at the end of 2018.