Port Saint John already feeling effect of rail stoppage

A nationwide rail stoppage began overnight and the port in Saint John is already feeling the impact only hours into the disruption.

"For example … it's a five day rail journey for potash at our large dry-bulk facility here in Saint John," said Craig Bell Estabrooks, the president and CEO of Port Saint John.

"Potash is obviously very, very crucial to global food security, and we started to see that wind down throughout the week.

"We know shipments that are destined for Saint John — and hopefully will be destined for Saint John eventually — have been halted in central Canada."

Affected industries include agriculture, mining, energy, retail, automaking and construction. U.S. railways have also had to turn away Canada-bound shipments. (Travis Golby/CBC)

In the culmination of months of increasingly bitter negotiations, Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Kansas City locked out 9,300 engineers, conductors and yard workers after the parties failed to agree on a new contract before the midnight deadline.

The companies haul a combined $1 billion in goods each day, according to the Railway Association of Canada. Many shipments were stopped pre-emptively to avoid stranding cargo.

As of Thursday morning, Bell Estabrooks said, locally, no ships had decided to divert, "but as boxes could come in and you're not able to utilize, you know, your intermodal rail services, you're going to start to get bottlenecks, and we will return to that kind of pandemic level of supply chain disruption."

A file photo shows a cargo ship at the port of Saint John, one of many ports across the country affected by the rail stoppage. (Roger Cosman/CBC News)

When asked at what point he expects to see cargo start getting stuck at the port, he said it'll be "hours and days, not weeks and months."

Bell Estabrooks said the port exports a lot of frozen products, such as french fries, that can't sit on the docks and still be consumed. He said on Monday, CPKC had already started ramping down refrigerated services at ports across the country, including in Saint John.

A resolution to this stoppage is needed — and quickly, he said, but he remains hopeful, despite looming backups.

"All disruptions come to an end, you know, there will be a resolution," he said. "What we don't know is how long will it take and what will it look like.

"So I'm hopeful people can get to the table … and we can get cargo moving again here very, very soon."