The Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) has decided that a complaint filed by a Manitoba NDP staffer regarding the Hudson Bay Railway’s (HBR) suspension of service between Gillam and Churchill due to flooding will proceed to a hearing on Feb. 15.
“I visited Churchill a few weeks back and consistently every conversation was, ‘We gotta get this rail line reopened,’ and I know there’s a lot of other northern communities that are impacted by the line to so this is an important step that we have standing and we have a hearing date,” Manitoba NDP leader Wab Kinew told the Nickel Belt News.
The complaint against OmniTrax was originally filed at the end of August, about three months after the last train travelled between Gillam and Churchill, which has no other land link to the rest of the province.
OmniTrax argued that the complaint should be dismissed because it is not the operator of the rail line and because the unnamed NDP staffer who filed the complaint does not have standing to file the application.
Despite OmniTrax’s objections that it is not a federally regulated railway company and that it isn’t clear which of the many affiliated companies using the name OmniTrax that the complaint was filed against, the CTA decided that it was not unreasonable for the company to be identified as the respondent in the application “given the role OmniTrax has played in both communicating with the media about the condition of the railway line and the publication of the Fore Majeure notice.”
OmniTrax also argued unsuccessfully that the complainant didn’t have sufficient interest in the subject matter of the complaint and was claiming injury and seeking relief to be awarded to other parties.
“However, the present case does not involve a complaint about the quality of service being provided by HBR, but rather it is a complaint about the cessation of service to an entire community,” the CTA said. “Accordingly, HDR’s request to dismiss the application is denied.”
“If the CTA finds in our favour, that means that they could order the line to be repaired and OmniTrax would have to comply,” said Kinew. “I think that the best case scenario in terms of people in Churchill and the line as far as getting a quick resolution would be that we just have the hearing for the one day, that they take it away for a few days, maybe a few weeks, and come back with their decision sometime late February, early March. However ... they could decide that maybe they want to look into it more and extend that hearing. We’re cautiously optimistic that this is going to move ahead in relatively short order.”
While it isn’t clear if OmniTrax, which says it doesn’t have money to carry out the necessary repairs to restore train service to Churchill, which it estimates would cost $40 million to $60 million, could comply with any order to take out repairs, Kinew says the possibility of that order being made can provide some leverage to the governments trying to ensure the company gets service up and running again.
“This is a positive step because it could lead to the rail line being repaired by order or this could just act as another piece of leverage to get that deal done and I think that that’s important because talking to people in Churchill and other communities impacted, what I’ve heard is whether it happens by negotiation or by court or by judicial process, or quasi-judicial process like this one, the bottom line is they want a rail line operating this summer,” said Kinew.
