Railways. Airlines. Ports. Seaways. All have experienced significant labour disruption in the past 18 months.

Canada has experienced 62 work stoppages in the transportation sector alone in 2023 and 2024, involving close to 20,000 workers, according to government of Canada statistics.

This month, Canada’s two largest ports (Vancouver and Montreal) have been completely or partially shut down due to labour disruptions. In September, a strike by grain handlers at the Port of Vancouver disrupted exports during peak shipping season. In August, the country’s two largest railways, including Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC), came to a halt due to labour work stoppages. Before that, a strike shut down one of the nation’s largest airlines and threatened to shut down another. That was after the St. Lawrence Seaway was forced to close a year ago, which happened months after the previous B.C. port shutdown that went on for two weeks in July, 2023.

These are self-inflicted harm to our supply chains. A work stoppage of any duration or even the threat of a work stoppage at a port, major freight railway or other cargo handler causes serious disruption to Canada’s supply chains and harms the country’s reputation as a stable, dependable trading partner. The adverse impacts have ripple effects beyond the supply chain and endure beyond the work stoppage itself.

Increasingly, Canada’s message to the world is not one of efficiency, affordability and reliability. Lately, and repeatedly, it’s been the opposite: Disruptions. Delays. Diversions.

Frequent and continual labour disruptions compound the damage. The dispute at the Port of Montreal is the third in four years. Canadian labour instability has become a chronic problem. The pattern of disruption is forcing global shipping companies to look elsewhere and ship through alternative U.S. ports. They have choices and those shippers are choosing less efficient, more expensive routes simply because Canada has become unreliable and unpredictable. Added costs get passed on to Canadian consumers, unnecessarily driving up the cost of living.

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