The new agreement replaces the previous three-year deal, that was effective through December 31, 2026, CN Rail said, adding that the new agreement does not require ratification from the union’s members.

The rail company had faced a threat of work stoppage last year by rail unions until the Canadian government called for a binding arbitration to reach an agreement over a new contract.

Monday’s announcement follows a recent wave of agreements and ratifications across sectors, as unions push for better working conditions and pay.

“The arbitrator’s decision underscores the importance of a full industrial review of labor relations in Canada’s rail sector,” said Paul Boucher, TCRC president.

Last year, Unifor, which represents more than 3,000 rail workers, ratified a new four-year collective agreement with CN Rail, averting a potential strike action.

—Reporting by Anshuman Tripathy in Bengaluru

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“CN’s contingency plans are in place, operations will continue, and our dedicated teams are prepared to ensure the seamless continuity of service,” the railway said on its website.

CN has been in talks with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) union since September. According to the railway, the union, which represents 750 workers, rejected a recent offer and issued a strike notice. A work stoppage could begin just after midnight on January 28.

In 2022, IBEW workers walked off the job for 17 days. The strike concluded when the union and CN agreed to take the dispute to binding arbitration. That strike did not directly affect rail traffic.

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“CN cannot escape the spotlight. The shameful behaviour by CN Autoport in Halifax will be met with resistance across our union,” said Lana Payne, Unifor national president in a March 14 news release.

“CN can expect more unscheduled disruption from coast-to-coast if it continues strike-busting tactics,” Payne added.

Unifor said it “safely” stopped the train at “a rail crossing at a public roadway near CN’s Winnipeg yards” where close to 100 Unifor members and supporters were holding a demonstration.

Workers at Autoport, a CN-operated transshipping hub at the Port of Halifax, began their strike on February 27, according to a news release from Unifor. Unifor Local 100 represents 239 workers at that facility.

Unifor said it stopped the train as a protest after CN brought in replacement workers to work at the Halifax facility. It said some cars, loaded onto trains by these replacement workers, end up in Winnipeg where they’re stored before delivery elsewhere in North America.

“The strike in Halifax will be resolved with good faith bargaining at the bargaining table,” said Gavin McGarrigle, Unifor’s western regional director. “CN is wrong if it thinks it can bully our members with scabs. This approach will only extend the strike and cause headaches for its national operations.”

In a statement, CN, speaking for Autoport, did not directly address the incident, however it said that it respected the right to peaceful and safe strike actions and remained “committed to achieving a fair negotiated settlement with the union.”

“We recently reiterated to employees that we remain ready to find a resolution at the bargaining table as soon as Unifor is ready,” a CN spokesperson said.

“Our contingency plan is keeping the supply chain fluid and goods moving safely. These activities will continue uninterrupted as along as necessary.”

–Updated March 15 to add comments from CN.

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The 750-odd workers, represented by International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) System Council 11, had agreed to take their dispute with CN to arbitration in early July, ending a 17-day strike.

CN on Oct. 11 said arbitration has concluded in a three-year collective agreement with IBEW, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2022 through to Dec. 31, 2024.

The agreement includes a three per cent wage increase for each of 2022, 2023 and 2024, Montreal-based CN said in a release.

IBEW members at CN install and maintain signals and trackside equipment, including the warning systems at railroad-highway crossings.

Unlike some other railway labour disputes in recent years — such as the eight-day strike by CN’s Teamster-led conductors and railyard workers in 2019 — the IBEW strike did not directly affect rail traffic, as CN had an “operational contingency plan” in place while unionized signals staff were off the job.

CN’s chief operating officer Rob Reilly, in the company’s release, said it’s “satisfied to have concluded this arbitration” and will “continue to focus on implementing a back-to-basics approach by running a scheduled operation, aligning capacity with demand.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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CN, in a statement Monday, said the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) System Council 11, which represents about 750 of the company’s employees across the country, had agreed to take its labour dispute to binding arbitration.

The strike is to end just after midnight ET Tuesday, and affected employees are to return to their jobs starting at 7 a.m. ET Wednesday, CN said.

Federal Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan, in a tweet Monday afternoon, thanked federal mediators for helping the company and union reach an agreement to end the strike.

CN, in Monday’s statement, also thanked “management employees and contractors” for working to allow railway operations to “continue uninterrupted” over the past two and a half weeks.

As of Monday afternoon the IBEW hasn’t yet made a statement about the strike ending, but said June 29 its members had been “substituted by replacement (scab) [sic] workers from both Canada and the U.S.”

That move “should concern everyone in our country, as it opens the door for unqualified people operating and maintaining our rail safety across Canada,” IBEW International vice-president Russ Shewchuk said in a June 29 statement.

IBEW members at CN install and maintain signals and trackside equipment, including the warning systems at railroad-highway crossings.

Shewchuk had called CN’s use of substitute workers “another prime example of the importance of federal anti-scab legislation (which would) prevent the employer from using replacement, and likely unqualified, workers.”

After IBEW members went on strike June 18, CN said its “operational contingency plan… allows the company to maintain a normal level of safe rail operations across Canada and serve its customers for as long as required.” The company had also said at the time it was open to binding arbitration if need be.

The most recent strike to halt CN rail service took place in 2019, when the company’s Teamster-led conductors and yard workers went on strike for eight days.

The IBEW’s previous five-year agreement with CN expired at the end of 2021.

After the two sides went to bargaining last fall, the railway “refused the union’s request for a fair and reasonable wage increase over a span of three years,” IBEW System Council 11 chairman Steve Martin said in a statement June 18.

Meanwhile, he said, the IBEW was “compromising on many union issues, and even acquiescing to company demands to increase the amount of interprovincial travel and the time a member spends away from their home and family.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The Teamsters union argued in court filings that Canadian Pacific Railway should face contempt fines of $50,000 a day for making its conductors and locomotive engineers stay late, despite an arbitrator’s decision that ends duty after their shifts.

The case, which has been filed in Federal Court in Toronto, is expected to go to court in 2020, said sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the dispute is still wading its way through the legal system. No date has been set.

In an emailed statement to Reuters, Calgary-based CP denied that it failed to comply with the arbitrator’s 2018 order, adding it is “vigorously defending” its claim and believes the case should be resolved outside of court.

Workers’ shifts and fatigue emerged as key issues in November during a crippling, eight-day strike at Canadian National Railway, which ended with an agreement-in-principle set to be finalized in late January.

A recording of an exhausted CN conductor facing pressure to move a freight train following his 10-hour shift helped spur a breakthrough in the negotiations.

Transport Minister Marc Garneau is reviewing rail industry proposals submitted this week to introduce new work-rest rules for railway employees, as part of broader efforts by North American regulators to fight fatigue.

CP said in the emailed statement that the parties are currently “working to resolve a host of procedural issues” in the case.

Mixing arbitration and the courts is a departure from the normal practice of separating the two fields, following a 1995 Supreme Court of Canada decision on the matter, a human resources expert said.

“It would be very uncommon,” said Rafael Gomez, director of the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto.

CP argued Federal Court is the wrong forum to hear “complex operational issues” such as the ones in the case.

The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) union and Canada’s large railways have clashed for years over working hours in the 24-hour, mostly on-call industry serving far-flung locations, where delays are common because of bad weather and congestion.

“These issues can and should be dealt with through the processes already provided for under the collective agreement between the parties,” CP said.

The TCRC, which declined comment, argued in the June 2019 filing that CP left it no other choice but to go to court.

“The union has now been forced to seek this contempt motion because the violations continue to occur hundreds of times every month,” said the TCRC, which represents thousands of Canadian rail workers.

The union said it identified 6,215 violations of workers’ rest provisions between the publication of the arbitrator’s order on March 23, 2018, and Dec. 19, 2018.

CP’s unionized locomotive engineers and conductors can book rest within 10 hours if they give proper notice, and can be off duty within 12 hours, barring extenuated circumstances outside the railway’s control, such as bad weather.

Rail workers in Canada and the U.S. can work a maximum of 12 hours, according to regulations in each country.

While arbitrator Graham Clark did not side fully with the union or CP, his March 2018 decision issued a cease and desist order after “CP’s own evidence indicated that thousands of situations continue to occur annually where employees are not off within 10 hours.”

Most of the workers were kept less than an hour late.

“The health and safety of the union’s members (and the public), maximum hours of work and their right to book rest if they are fatigued, is of paramount concern,” the union said in the 2019 filing.

— Reporting for Reuters by Allison Lampert in Montreal and Anna Mehler-Paperny in Toronto; additional reporting by Kelsey Johnson in Ottawa.

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“By the second week of December (week 19), CN returned to shipping at peak levels, as well as taking on all customer hopper demand for the second and third weeks of December,” Montreal-based CN said in a release Thursday.

“Despite a slow start to the crop year due to adverse weather, CN spotted over 6,800 hopper cars per week during the first two weeks of November (weeks 14 and 15 of the crop year). This was the high point of the crop year. The eight-day strike prevented CN from accepting any new orders during week 17 as CN was only operating at approximately 10 per cent of overall capacity.”

Due to the strike in week 16 (Nov. 17-23) CN delivered 37 per cent of the 5,409 grain cars on time to companies participating in data collection done by the Ag Transport Coalition.

Many grain companies have seen CN’s shipping program restored to pre-strike levels, Western Grain Elevator Association (WGEA) executive director Wade Sobkowich said in an email.

“That does not mean it has caught up, nor have we recovered from the eight days we lost,” he wrote.

In an email CN spokesman Jonathan Abecassis said CN is encouraging customers to place more orders for grain movement to fully utilize available capacity.

CN set two grain shipping records earlier this fall. In October CN moved a record 2.8 million tonnes of grain. The previous record was 2.7 million tonnes set in April 2019.

In week 11 (Oct. 13-19) of the current crop year CN moved a record 685,187 tonnes of grain from Prairie country elevators to export terminals. The previous weekly record was 675,075 tonnes, moved in week 10 of the 2017-18 crop year.

CN’s Calgary rival Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) on Dec. 2 also booked an all-time record monthly Canadian grain handle of 2.74 million tonnes in November, up from its previous all-time record of 2.66 million, set in October.

CP’s next-to-previous such record, 2,62 million tonnes, was set in April this year.

— Allan Dawson is a reporter for the Manitoba Co-operator at Miami, Man.

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Neumann, senior trader for Agfinity at Stony Plain, Alta., said barley currently was around $223 per tonne Lethbridge delivered and wheat was a little back at $220 per tonne. He noted prices had increased recently, but since came down.

“We had a discussion in our office and we felt the question wasn’t why did it come down, but moreso, why was it propped up in the first place?” he said.

Neumann chalked that up to transportation, with a trucking shortage and the strike at Canadian National Railway. That resulted in buyers making purchases for a short time.

Since “the market corrected to its equilibrium,” he said, “buyers are pretty much covered for December.”

Also, supplies will be ample through winter and well into spring, Neumann said. The difficult Prairie harvest resulted in large amounts of wheat and barley being sold for feed this fall. Crops will be left to overwinter and will become available in the spring. That would normally be a time when feed grains would otherwise be in short supply.

“Most sales are going to have to be in 2020,” Neumann said.

— Glen Hallick reports for MarketsFarm, a Glacier FarmMedia division specializing in grain and commodity market analysis and reporting.

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Chicago Board of Trade wheat futures closed modestly higher on technical buying and concerns about this week’s decline in U.S. crop condition ratings.

CBOT December corn settled down 3-1/4 cents at $3.66-3/4 per bushel after dipping to $3.65-3/4, the contract’s lowest level since Sept. 18 (all figures US$). January soybeans ended down 6-1/2 cents at $9.05 a bushel after falling through chart support at $9.10.

CBOT December wheat closed 3-1/2 cents higher on the day at $5.15-1/2 a bushel.

Soybean futures fell to session lows after a report said a “phase one” trade deal between Washington and Beijing may not be completed this year. Completion of an initial trade deal could slide into next year, Reuters reported, citing trade experts and people close to the White House.

China is the world’s largest soy importer.

Both sides had pointed to progress in the talks in the past week, but U.S. President Donald Trump warned on Tuesday that his country would raise tariffs on Chinese imports if no deal was reached.

CBOT corn futures sagged even before Wednesday’s news report, weighed down by seasonal pressure from the ongoing U.S. harvest and liquidation ahead of the delivery phase for the December contract, which begins next week.

“It doesn’t seem like the farmer is selling that much, but there is always some selling at harvest,” said Dan Cekander, president of DC Analysis.

Weather forecasts for beneficial rains in crop areas of Brazil and Argentina added pressure, bolstering prospects for South American corn and soy production.

“The widespread rainfall next week should lead to significant improvements in soil moisture and will likely ease most of the remaining areas of dryness across central and southern Brazil, favoring corn and soybean growth,” space technology company Maxar said in a daily weather note.

Wheat futures firmed despite a lack of market-moving news, with analysts citing short covering and Monday’s weekly U.S. crop progress report in which the U.S. Department of Agriculture rated 52 per cent of the U.S. winter wheat crop in good to excellent condition, down from 54 per cent a week earlier.

“It’s been a strong market this week, with the crop ratings declining,” said Brian Hoops, president of Midwest Market Solutions.

CBOT December oat futures settled up 7-1/4 cents at $3.13-3/4 a bushel and notched a contract high at $3.19-1/2 on worries about supplies of milling-quality oats due to poor weather in Canada and a strike by Canadian National Railway (CN) workers that could slow transportation of oats.

“The strike will slow things down, and those grains take a back seat to everything else,” said Dan Anderson, analyst with ED+F Man Capital in Chicago.

— Reporting for Reuters by Julie Ingwersen in Chicago; additional reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris and Naveen Thukral in Singapore.

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Bibeau will join her colleagues — including returning Transport Minister Marc Garneau and new Labour Minister Filomena Tassi, a Hamilton MP and former minister for seniors — in having to deal immediately with calls for Parliament to be reconvened early to pass back-to-work legislation for striking rail workers.

Tassi’s office is expected to take the lead role in handling the CN strike. Earlier this week about 3,000 conductors, train workers and yard workers at Canadian National Railway went on strike, affecting bulk freight traffic and movement of western Canadian grain.

That has prompted calls from industry leaders and some provincial governments for Parliament to reconvene before its scheduled return on Dec. 5.

Ministers were non-committal on the option of back-to-work legislation to end the strike. Tassi told reporters following her swearing-in that she had spoken with both parties and her priority is to ensure they are working hard to come to an agreement.

“We feel there is a solution at hand” and a “light at the end of the tunnel,” Garneau said.

Bibeau is also facing continued calls for business risk management (BRM) and advanced payment programs to be redeveloped. Grain Growers of Canada is continuing to ask the federal government to have coverage of margin losses below 85 per cent be included along with the removal of the reference margin limit.

Industry sources have identified key issues the government should address, including the trade, public and legal pressures on glyphosate, updating the Canada Grain Act and setting up a process to raise funds for varietal development through royalties on farm-saved seed.

Bibeau — who has meetings scheduled next month with her provincial counterparts, where BRM programs are expected to be a priority — said she “looks forward” to those meetings.

“We’re working with the industry, we’re working with our colleagues from the different provinces to try and get the best strategy,” she said. “This is definitely a very high priority for me.”

It’s expected Bibeau will also continue to play a part in expanding international market access for producers and working to end a ban on Canadian canola exports to China.

That ban stems from the arrest of Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of the United States, after which Chinese authorities also detained two Canadians, accusing them of espionage.

The two detained Canadians remain a priority for the federal government, and the issue of a canola ban will take a backseat to this, meaning the foreign affairs department and its new minister, Francois-Philippe Champagne, will take the lead on engaging China.

Bibeau has handled the agriculture portfolio since March and is generally spoken of highly by those within industry who work with her.

“We are looking forward to continuing our relationship with Minister Bibeau and the Cabinet as a whole over the coming months and years,” Grain Growers of Canada chair Jeff Nielsen in a release. “We are ready to carry on the important work of ensuring a competitive environment where Canadian agriculture can survive and thrive.”

“Over the past nine months, producers have appreciated (Bibeau’s) availability to hear concerns and work on solutions,” Rick bergmann, chair of the Canadian Pork Council, said in a separate statement. “The collaboration shown by staff under her leadership has been very much appreciated by the pork sector.”

“We look forward to working with Minister Bibeau and discussing the CFA’s key priorities,” Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Mary Robinson said in a separate release.

Among the priorities Robinson listed were the CN rail strike, trade issues, business risk management programming, rural infrastructure funding and funding for climate-change related ag research.

Farmers are also looking for relief from costs associated with carbon pricing, including recognition of practices already taking place to reduce carbon emissions.

That file goes to Vancouver MP Jonathan Wilkinson, the new minister for environment and climate change. Before last month’s election, Wilkinson had served as fisheries minister and, previously, as parliamentary secretary on the environment file.

Wilkinson was considered a natural choice to take over the position from Catherine McKenna, because of his previous work in the sector. Wilkinson also has roots in Saskatchewan, as he worked for former Premier Roy Romanow.

Overall the cabinet favours Ontario and Quebec regionally, but the Liberal minority government is trying to assure voters, particularly in Alberta and Saskatchewan, that they are not blind to regional differences. To that end, Manitoba MP Jim Carr, undergoing treatment for a form of blood cancer, has been named as “special advisor” for the Prairies.

No Liberals were elected in Alberta or Saskatchewan, increasing regional tensions and concerns those provinces would be left without a voice at the cabinet table. Carr was not sworn into cabinet, but Chrystia Freeland will try to calm tensions in her new position as deputy prime minister and minister of intergovernmental affairs.

Among other cabinet posts of interest to farmers, Toronto-area MP Mary Ng becomes minister for international trade; and Peterborough MP Maryam Monsef becomes minister for rural economic development.

— D.C. Fraser reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Ottawa. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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