Churchill’s future has looked bright in the past, then politics dimmed the lights

As it thunders quickly towards its centenary birthday, the future of the often-troubled and chronically overlooked Port of Churchill and Hudson Bay railway looks exceedingly bright.

No, really. We mean it this time.

The port and railway have materialized on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Major Projects Office radar, a major hurdle for any Canadian strategic infrastructure project. The MPO interest brings with it the promise of significant federal funding.

Underline the word “promise” in that last sentence.

Churchill (port and railway) is not officially a MPO-designated project yet, but there is money flowing to do some upgrades to the railway and study the possibility of using icebreakers and supporting vessels to extend the shipping season. A more comprehensive strategy — no doubt with a much larger price tag — is expected to be unveiled by the two governments next spring.

This is hardly the first time Manitoba and Ottawa have dug deep for Churchill. Although it’s a hard number to nail down, with different governments and different timelines for releasing money, it’s safe to say that over the last decade, about a half-billion dollars has flowed from Ottawa and Manitoba into Manitoba’s North to keep Churchill connected and operating.

And what has all this money achieved? Churchill has not become the strategic transportation asset that its proponents wanted it to become. On the other hand, the port and railway are still operating, and that’s not nothing when you consider the macro forces that have conspired to shut it down.

The argument in favour of the port and railway today is much the same today as it was nearly a century ago: a deep-water port on the Arctic edge that would give the producers of Canadian resources another, shorter route to the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe.

Over the years, Churchill came perilously close to fulfilling that destiny. But every time the tonnage through the port approached the level of profitability, the politics of resources and transportation shifted.

Potent lobbies representing eastern and western ports, and the St. Lawrence Seaway, convinced politicians to focus on east-west transportation routes for commodity exports. Grain and railway companies aided and abetted these lobbies, and federal politicians — realizing there were many more votes to be had outside of Manitoba — did their part to starve Churchill into non-existence.

A near-fatal blow came in the 2012 when the Conservative federal government blew up the Canadian Wheat Board. The Crown marketing agency had pushed a lot of grain through Churchill over the years. When the CWB was shuttered, grain shipments through Churchill dried up.

But Churchill endured, in no small part because it is not just a trade route; the railway that connects it to The Pas is also a critical transportation link for the people of Manitoba’s North. For successive provincial governments of all stripes, and many of the MPs and cabinet ministers elected in this province, losing federal support for the port and railway was a non-starter.

A private company from Denver tried its hand at operating the port with federal and provincial largesse, and failed spectacularly. More recently, a consortium of 41 First Nations — operating as the Arctic Gateway Group — have found more traction.

The government investments announced this year are very promising. And the likelihood there is more money to come is even more hopeful. Even so, these commitments do not ensure the future of the port and rail line.

The federal and provincial governments have been investing money and promising that Churchill was going to realize the strategic success that was envisioned when it was first opened in 1931.

Carney and Premier Wab Kinew have assured us that things are different this time thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump’s destructive global trade war.

With Trump’s punishing tariffs on Canadian exports to the U.S., Carney is leading an all-out offensive to establish trade deals with other regions of the world. Canada’s interests in increasing trade to the U.K. and Europe make Churchill — which is closer to Liverpool than Montreal — seem like an obvious option to ship some of the commodities originating in Western Canada.

Will Churchill fall prey to the same regional politics that has kept it on the verge of destruction for so many years?

The broader argument for a more robust Churchill is that Canada will be shipping so much more of its resources and value-added products to markets other than the U.S. that there will be more than enough tonnage to go around for all: the major east and west coast ports and Canada’s only deep-water Arctic port.

It’s a totally viable theory, but building a more robust Churchill does not guarantee that “they” — shippers, railways, producers — will come. The governments that invest heavily in Churchill will also have to make certain demands on all these inter-connected players to ensure that some of what we produce flows north.

From a logical perspective, there is no strong argument against making better use of Churchill. It can handle all forms of commodity — grains, fertilizer, minerals — and is as close to lucrative European markets as any Canadian port.

Unfortunately, logic has not helped Churchill in the past. One can only hope that a Trumpian trade dystopia forces everyone to embrace logic, once and for all.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com