A complaint filed by the Manitoba NDP caucus regarding the OmniTrax-owned Hudson Bay Railway refusing to perform the repairs needed to restore rail service to Churchill after more than a year has resulted in the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) ordering the company to begin fixing the line by July 3.
The CTA also said that the company would have to file progress reports on the state of the repairs at the beginning of every month after that.
The decision said the order is similar to those issued in the past, most recently involving the City of Ottawa and Univar Canada Ltd. and that, if the CTA order is not complied with, it could be filed with the Federal Court or any superior court and it would be enforceable as an order of that court.
“Further non-compliance may result in contempt of court proceedings,” the CTA told the Thompson Citizen.
Manitoba NDP and opposition leader Wab Kinew said he didn’t necessarily think that OmniTrax would begin repairs as ordered but that this decision was an important first step.
“This is the first time that the company has been ordered to fix the rail line,” he said, as well as proof that the solution isn’t only in federal hands. “We heard for a long time the province saying there’s nothing a provincial entity could do but we decided to stand up and take action and the result … of it is there’s this order in place now and I think it’s not going to change things overnight for Churchill, but hopefully it is an important step towards getting that rail line in the hands of a northern ownership group and also getting the rail line fixed.”
A spokesperson for Unifor, a union that represented some Via workers whose livelihood was affected when OmniTrax indefinitely suspended rail service to Churchill last June, as well as some employees of the Hudson Bay Railway, was similarly sceptical about whether the railway owner would heed the order.
“We’re very pleased with the decision,” said Unifor area director for Manitoba and Saskatchewan Paul McKie. “It’s unfortunate it couldn’t have come sooner but again, given the timing and everything, that’s a fairly fast decision from a federal agency. We’re hopeful that in fact repairs do happen. Obviously there are issues at play, not the least of which too is the railway itself seems to have been sold. In terms of what they’re going to do with the repairs that they’ve been ordered to make, presumably they’ll try to get out of it and what does that mean for the new railway?”
A statement from the Town of Churchill said that it couldn’t “speculate what course of action may take place as a result of this ruling. It is important to note however, that this does not change our efforts at this time. We remain committed as partners in a buying group that is finalizing a deal to acquire the assets of OmniTrax. That remains our focus.”
A spokesperson for OmniTrax said the company was studying the decision and would issue a statement regarding the ruling sometime this week.
Kinew said people should be asking why it was an opposition party and not the provincial government that did the work to obtain this order.
“I think it just highlights the fact that the province has been missing in action on this,” he said. “Pallister’s got thousands of government employees, they’ve got probably hundreds of years of experience between them. He’s got himself, he’s got his cabinet, they’ve got all those resources and they didn’t do this. Maybe the process could have moved along more quickly if Justice Department lawyers were working on it but they kept saying there was nothing they could do. Even earlier this year when we invited them, when we said ‘Hey, they found that we have standing to pursue this thing, why don’t you join us and help move this along for the people of Churchill and the other affected communities?’ they said no.”
