Churchill already feeling effects of freight service reduction

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This article was published 01/08/2016 (3389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Store shelves in Churchill might look sparse this week.

The town on the shore of Hudson Bay is beginning to feel the effects of a reduction in freight services, cutting its access to supplies ranging from fresh food to lumber. The change comes from Omnitrax Canada, which announced its intention to cut freight services on its northern rail line in half last week, reducing shipments to one train per week from two.

Sunday marked the first scheduled shipment to be cancelled since the announcement.

“Everybody’s in the same situation,” said Churchill Mayor Mike Spence on Monday.

Spence said stores relying on goods that would ordinarily have been brought in by freight will have to wait until later this week to replenish their stock.

“We won’t see (a shipment) till Wednesday. We probably won’t see it on the shelf until Thursday,” Spence said.

“It’s going to, naturally, have some effects in terms of your groceries and especially your fruit products when you’re only getting one shipment a week,” he added.

Spence said the way freight shipment carried, essentially, “everything that supports (our) community.”

“It’s all your groceries, all your perishables, all your, basically, everything,” he said.

Last week, Derek Reimer, an official from the North West Company, said the company will use expensive air transportation to fly in fresh produce for its Northern Store in Churchill.

“We’ll continue to assess the situation,” he said. “In the short term, consumers won’t see price increases as a result of higher transportation costs.”

Omnitrax announced the change just days after it revealed the closure of the Port of Churchill, the largest single employer in the town. When it’s operating at full capacity, it employs up to 90 people — about 10 per cent of the town’s population.

It will be the first time since the Second World War the Port of Churchill has not been shipping grain.

“This is devastating to the community,” Spence told the Free Press last week. “We’re affected big-time.”

Omnitrax has so far been silent on the issue. Calls last week and on Monday went unanswered.

Meanwhile, local leaders are trying to salvage the 2016 shipping season, with farmers preparing to harvest what is expected to be a record-setting grain crop that would otherwise have gone through the Port of Churchill.

Leaders from at least a half dozen northern communities met with provincial cabinet ministers in a hastily convened meeting on Wednesday. Spence told the Free Press they are now trying to put together an action plan that might include some sort of lease of the facilities with temporary management and marketing support to drum up business and keep the port going this year.

The Port of Churchill was owned by a Crown corporation called Ports Canada until its sale to Denver-based Omnitrax in 1997. Canadian National railway also sold the line to Omnitrax at the same time.

— with files from Bill Redekop, Larry Kusch, Martin Cash

aidan.geary@freepress.mb.ca