In addition to our media outreach and meetings with government officials regarding the current rail blockades across Canada, Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) has issued the following note and the attached statement to all MPs.
The Issue
On behalf of Canada’s forest products sector and forestry families across the country, I wanted to ensure you had a copy of the statement we issued yesterday regarding illegal rail blockades.
I will note that this statement was released February 13, in advance of the broader shutdowns announced by Via Rail and CN Rail on Thursday afternoon.
We were pleased to hear from our partners at CN last night about the illegal blockade ending at New Hazelton, BC.
Thanking our Railway Partners
I wish to commend CN and CP who have been doing their best to work with us over the past week to keep our goods moving and our people working. I cannot imagine how stressful this has been for Canada’s front-line railway workers.
Rail Service is Critical to Forestry
We are increasingly concerned about peaceful protest shifting to more militant action intended to deliberately halt our economy and to stop people from their right to move from A to B.
Rail lines are vital arteries for our sector and the 230,000 forestry workers working in it. Today, we move 50% of our goods on rail – and we would like to do more.
If we could move this 50% to 80% it would not only lower shipping costs, but would take 850,000 trucks off the road annually = removing 400,000 tons of C02 per year.
Furthermore, 80% of our mills are in rural/remote locations that are served by just one railway, and contingencies (if at all possible) are very expensive.
Impacts and Next Steps: We Need Your Support
The current illegal disruptions have already cost our sector tens of millions and the impacts are soon to be felt on the men and women working in our mills. A number of our mills cannot get raw materials in, they cannot get empty cars in, and they can’t get orders out – and we’re running out of warehousing space.
If everything was resolved tomorrow, we still would be challenged to get raw materials and rail cars to our mills by mid to late next week.
The reverberations across the system are real and we are getting very nervous about our ability to continue operations in a number of locations.
Our sector works with over 1,400 Indigenous businesses, is one of the country’s largest employers of Indigenous people (with Indigenous youth being a growing cohort in our talent pipeline), and is advancing joint ventures and land-based collaborations with Indigenous communities across the country. These Indigenous communities/partners now hold 11% of the national wood supply (in MB it’s 34%, in SK it’s 30%, and in ON it’s 18%). These partnerships are important to us.
Illegal actions are undermining the rule of law, they are emboldening those who are proudly sharing on social media how they want to hurt Canada’s economy, and they are starting to impact working families in a big way.
We need your support to get our economy back on track and to send a message to our customers and investors that they can be confident in sourcing from and investing in Canada.
Thank you for your attention to this.
Derek.
|
Derek Nighbor |
|
e: DNighbor@fpac.ca |
410 – 99 Bank Street |