CN Rail's Chief Legal Officer says it's time for the illegal rail blockades to end.
Sean Finn, who also serves as Executive Vice President of Corporate Services, notes it will take some time for the railway to recover. He says for the entire grain season, they are 218,000 metric tonnes behind.
"This recovery and the challenges we have will have an impact on our capability of meeting grain spots that are set out in our grain plan," he commented. "We're going to have a challenge getting empty cars back from Vancouver, but we're working on it every day and hopefully within 2 or 3 weeks, we'll have recovered."
As of Friday morning, Finn notes the blockade at Belleville, Ontario remains active which essentially cuts off Eastern and Western Canada from any rail traffic on CN as well as products coming from Eastern Canada going to the U.S. He says court orders have been issued on the illegal blockades which began two weeks ago. There was also a blockade between Prince George, BC and Prince Rupert, BC that lasted six days. It came down last week.
Finn expects that law officials will act accordingly.
"We have gotten court orders across the country, every blockade. We fully expect that law enforcement will do what they have to do to have these court orders respected. We understand that they have operational control, how it's done and when it's done."
He further explained what impact the rail blockades are having on country.
"Canadians have a right to protest, they should do so peacefully but we really don't understand why they do so on an active railway line impacting what we call CN's backbone of the economy. We move Canada's goods to market and having a protest that essentially shuts down the railway has an impact of shutting down the economy, impacting businesses and impacting people's livelihoods. It's a safety issue but it's also understanding that these protests have a direct impact on Canada's reputation abroad but also on our capability of moving Canada's goods to market both through the ports but also to the U.S."
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