Alta. ag minister contacts federal labour minister with CP strike looming

Mar 10, 2022

Any stoppage would inflict further damage on stressed supply chains, Nate Horner said

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Alberta’s minister of agriculture is asking the federal minister of labour to stop a potential railway strike before it happens.

In a March 4 letter, Nate Horner urges Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan to “implement direct measures to prevent a (Canadian Pacific) work stoppage,” Horner wrote. “Inaction will lead to negative economic consequences for Alberta and Canada, potential animal welfare issues and it would undermine both Canada’s and Alberta’s competitiveness and reputation as a reliable supplier to international customers.”

It's imperative that Minister O'Regan and the federal government immediately find a solution between CP and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference. pic.twitter.com/LppzXJckCM
— Nate Horner (@NateHornerAB) March 9, 2022

Canadian Pacific employees represented by the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) voted between Feb. 1 and Feb. 28, with 96.7 per cent, voting in favour of a strike that could start by March 16.

Of the 3,062 ballots sent out, 2,960 came back supporting the work stoppage.

TCRC cites wages, benefits and pensions as the three main issues at hand.

When TCRC and CP reached an impasse in December 2021, they presented a notice of dispute to the ministry of labour.

Minister O’Regan appointed a conciliation officer from the Federal Medication and Conciliation Service to assist the two parties. Then, in February, he appointed a mediator for further support.

The cattle sector is also concerned with the potential CP strike.

As of Feb. 1, Alberta and Saskatchewan had about 1.1 million head of cattle on feed.

A work stoppage, on top of a drought and lack of feed, would harm the sector.

“It is imperative that essential services are not interrupted, including the movement of agricultural products by rail,” said Bob Lowe, president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association. “We're running on imported corn from the U.S. to feed the cattle herd and feedlot sector. There are different numbers of what we need a week, somewhere around eight train loads of corn a week. Just to keep us even."

And U.S. ag associations are worried about how a CP strike would affect farmers south of the border.

The Agricultural Transportation Working Group sent a letter to the Biden administration asking it to work with the Canadian government to prevent the work stoppage.

A work stoppage would reduce the flow of fertilizer into the U.S.

“A CP railway strike would severely curtail fertilizer supply and shipments into the United States and would happen at the worst possible time as farmers are planting their 2022 crops,” the letter says. “Given the fragility of current supply chains, urgent attention and engagement with all parties is needed to avert a potential strike.”

If CP employees do strike, Minister O’Regan can implement back-to-work legislation.

These pieces of legislation end strikes or lockouts by forcing a binding arbitration process or implementing a new contract without negotiations.

The federal government last used back-to-work legislation in April 2021.

Filomena Tassi, the labour minister at the time, tabled the legislation to end the one-day strike at the Port of Montreal.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce estimated that strike would’ve cost between $10 and $25 million per day.

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”