Mandryk: CP Rail debate demonstrates what's wrong with the legislature
Murray Mandryk
© Provided by Leader Post
Premier Scott Moe had a point at the SARM convention about impact of a CP Rail work stoppage. The issue is where he is sincerely doing what he can to avert it.
The Saskatchewan legislature’s great emergency motion debate on the potential impact of the Canadian Pacific Rail labour dispute accomplished pretty much what it was designed to accomplish Thursday.
This is to say, it accomplished nothing.
It is a place where expectations don’t much go beyond scoring political points with your supporters. This is the way of the legislature. It is a place where there was “virtue signalling” decades before the term became fashionable.
This is not to suggest the potential impact of Canadian Pacific Railways potentially locking out 3,000 workers by Sunday is frivolous or even that Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is wrong to now be petitioning the federal government to finally address the problems created by the duopoly that is the Canadian rail system.
As Moe noted in his address to the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities: Rail service “is essential for communities and for people within the province of Saskatchewan” that’s clearly suffered from too many rail disruptions over the years.
“In no way does this undermine the negotiations that happen in any collective bargaining, but it would preserve that service and the continuity of that service for our province and for all Canadians,” Moe said Wednesday.
The premier is clearly right about the impact of such disruptions of commerce, but he’s not exactly been consistent.
This was the same Premier who opposed Ottawa’s use of the Emergency Act when truck convoy protestors were illegally stopping commerce and trade by blocking Canadian border entry points. When asked to explain his position on CBC’s Power and Politics, Moe said : “I am not going to tell them what to do.”
That six-day border blockade at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor resulted in an estimated $3 to $6 billion worth of goods not crossing the border, according to the University of Windsor’s Cross Border Institute.
The much longer border blockade at Coutts, Alta. had a far more direct effect on western and Saskatchewan trade and agriculture, not to mention several criminal charges involving weapons, assault and conspiracy to commit murder.
What happened at the borders last month was already “catastrophic to the supply chain and movement of Saskatchewan goods.”
Yet Moe somehow couldn’t rebuke those supposedly protesting the federal Liberal government-imposed COVID-19 restrictions. That, after all, would have sent the wrong signal.
(Moe’s refusal to condemn protests at Coutts and the Ambassador Bridge came up in question period this week. He could be heard muttering that there were no blockades specifically in Saskatchewan.)
That said, Moe is still right about the potential “catastrophe” of the CP Rail labour dispute. The question then is: What purpose did the “emergency” debate in the legislature serve to avert it?
Having already petitioned Ottawa to make the rail services essential, Moe didn’t need unanimous support of the Saskatchewan legislature in the form of an emergency resolution vote.
But if he truly did want to send a message of unanimous support that all corners of Saskatchewan desperately wanted to avert any work stoppage, wouldn’t it have required some compromised language that didn’t, as Moe said, “undermine the negotiations that happen in any collective bargaining?”
Instead, the Sask. Party’s initial “emergency” debate motion called for “back-to-work legislation,” which was philosophically untenable to the NDP.
Of course, the NDP had an equal need to virtue signal to their base by opposing what would be considered an “anti-labour” motion. (Perhaps the constant need to do this explains why it’s been than more decade since an NDP MLA has represented a rural seat.)
So Thursday’s great “emergency” debate quickly bogged down into an amendment fight with the government suggesting we must “immediately implement back-to-work legislation should a work stoppage and disruption of the rail service occur” and the NDP demanding negotiation of “a fair deal and to ensure Saskatchewan products keep moving to market without a rail stoppage.”
You can guess how each side voted.
After all, it’s always more important at the legislature to signal where you stand, than actually solve the issue.
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
The Saskatchewan legislature’s great emergency motion debate on the potential impact of the Canadian Pacific Rail labour dispute accomplished pretty much what it was designed to accomplish Thursday.
This is to say, it accomplished nothing.
It is a place where expectations don’t much go beyond scoring political points with your supporters. This is the way of the legislature. It is a place where there was “virtue signalling” decades before the term became fashionable.
This is not to suggest the potential impact of Canadian Pacific Railways potentially locking out 3,000 workers by Sunday is frivolous or even that Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is wrong to now be petitioning the federal government to finally address the problems created by the duopoly that is the Canadian rail system.
As Moe noted in his address to the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities: Rail service “is essential for communities and for people within the province of Saskatchewan” that’s clearly suffered from too many rail disruptions over the years.
“In no way does this undermine the negotiations that happen in any collective bargaining, but it would preserve that service and the continuity of that service for our province and for all Canadians,” Moe said Wednesday.
The premier is clearly right about the impact of such disruptions of commerce, but he’s not exactly been consistent.
This was the same Premier who opposed Ottawa’s use of the Emergency Act when truck convoy protestors were illegally stopping commerce and trade by blocking Canadian border entry points. When asked to explain his position on CBC’s Power and Politics, Moe said : “I am not going to tell them what to do.”
That six-day border blockade at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor resulted in an estimated $3 to $6 billion worth of goods not crossing the border, according to the University of Windsor’s Cross Border Institute.
The much longer border blockade at Coutts, Alta. had a far more direct effect on western and Saskatchewan trade and agriculture, not to mention several criminal charges involving weapons, assault and conspiracy to commit murder.
What happened at the borders last month was already “catastrophic to the supply chain and movement of Saskatchewan goods.”
Yet Moe somehow couldn’t rebuke those supposedly protesting the federal Liberal government-imposed COVID-19 restrictions. That, after all, would have sent the wrong signal.
(Moe’s refusal to condemn protests at Coutts and the Ambassador Bridge came up in question period this week. He could be heard muttering that there were no blockades specifically in Saskatchewan.)
That said, Moe is still right about the potential “catastrophe” of the CP Rail labour dispute. The question then is: What purpose did the “emergency” debate in the legislature serve to avert it?
Having already petitioned Ottawa to make the rail services essential, Moe didn’t need unanimous support of the Saskatchewan legislature in the form of an emergency resolution vote.
But if he truly did want to send a message of unanimous support that all corners of Saskatchewan desperately wanted to avert any work stoppage, wouldn’t it have required some compromised language that didn’t, as Moe said, “undermine the negotiations that happen in any collective bargaining?”
Instead, the Sask. Party’s initial “emergency” debate motion called for “back-to-work legislation,” which was philosophically untenable to the NDP.
Of course, the NDP had an equal need to virtue signal to their base by opposing what would be considered an “anti-labour” motion. (Perhaps the constant need to do this explains why it’s been than more decade since an NDP MLA has represented a rural seat.)
So Thursday’s great “emergency” debate quickly bogged down into an amendment fight with the government suggesting we must “immediately implement back-to-work legislation should a work stoppage and disruption of the rail service occur” and the NDP demanding negotiation of “a fair deal and to ensure Saskatchewan products keep moving to market without a rail stoppage.”
You can guess how each side voted.
After all, it’s always more important at the legislature to signal where you stand, than actually solve the issue.
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
Canadian Pacific and union still far apart on agreement, says Teamsters Canada
(Reuters) -The labor union representing Canadian Pacific Railway's employees said on Friday that contract negotiations remain difficult after the company issued a lockout notice, and the parties were still far from reaching an agreement.
(Reuters) -The labor union representing Canadian Pacific Railway's employees said on Friday that contract negotiations remain difficult after the company issued a lockout notice, and the parties were still far from reaching an agreement.
© Reuters/Ben Nelms FILE PHOTO: The Canadian Pacific railyard is pictured in Port Coquitlam.
Canada's second-biggest railroad operator notified the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference on Wednesday that it would lock out 3,000 engineers, conductors and yard workers early on Sunday, barring a breakthrough in talks on a deal covering pensions, pay and benefits.
"The negotiations are difficult and the parties are far apart," Teamsters Canada said in a statement, adding that discussions were resuming in Calgary late on Friday afternoon in the presence of a mediator.
Canadian Pacific in an emailed statement to Reuters said that in hopes of avoiding a labor disruption, "CP will continue to bargain in good faith with the TCRC leadership to achieve a negotiated settlement or enter binding arbitration."
Thousands of workers at CP threatened to strike this week, potentially disrupting the movement of grain, potash and coal at a time of soaring commodity prices.
The company says the main issue is the union's demand for higher pension caps, while the Teamsters also flag concerns about pay and benefits.
The last major railway labor disruption was an eight-day Canadian National Railway Co strike in 2019. But in the past 12 years, there have been 12 stoppages due to poor weather, blockades or labor issues, according to the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association.
(Reporting by Akriti Sharma and Shubhendu Deshmukh in Bengaluru; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Leslie Adler)
Canada's second-biggest railroad operator notified the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference on Wednesday that it would lock out 3,000 engineers, conductors and yard workers early on Sunday, barring a breakthrough in talks on a deal covering pensions, pay and benefits.
"The negotiations are difficult and the parties are far apart," Teamsters Canada said in a statement, adding that discussions were resuming in Calgary late on Friday afternoon in the presence of a mediator.
Canadian Pacific in an emailed statement to Reuters said that in hopes of avoiding a labor disruption, "CP will continue to bargain in good faith with the TCRC leadership to achieve a negotiated settlement or enter binding arbitration."
Thousands of workers at CP threatened to strike this week, potentially disrupting the movement of grain, potash and coal at a time of soaring commodity prices.
The company says the main issue is the union's demand for higher pension caps, while the Teamsters also flag concerns about pay and benefits.
The last major railway labor disruption was an eight-day Canadian National Railway Co strike in 2019. But in the past 12 years, there have been 12 stoppages due to poor weather, blockades or labor issues, according to the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association.
(Reporting by Akriti Sharma and Shubhendu Deshmukh in Bengaluru; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Leslie Adler)
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