No word from feds on help for north

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This article was published 09/11/2017 (2907 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — More than a week after raising the alarm about hundreds of fuel trucks travelling the icy highway to Thompson, the northern Manitoba city’s mayor said he’s still waiting for assistance from federal officials.

“I haven’t heard anything,” Thompson Mayor Dennis Fenske said Wednesday.

In recent weeks, Hudson Bay Railway owner Omnitrax has halved its rail service to Thompson to once a week, saying it’s no longer profitable to operate its line from The Pas, where the company has also laid off staff.

That has led local suppliers to opt for fuel trucks — as many as 250 per month — despite torturous driving conditions along Highway 6 from Winnipeg. The Omnitrax cuts appear to have started after Ottawa ratcheted up its rhetoric around the Denver-based company’s refusal to repair flood-damaged sections of the rail line leading to Churchill.

Federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr, a Winnipeg MP, said officials are keeping an eye on the situation.

“We are very concerned for the people of northern Manitoba,” Carr said from a conference in Paris. “We are working very diligently on both the short term and the long-term answers to the transportation issue.”

Fenske said Transport Canada told him 10 days ago it was going to review regulations on dangerous goods, to see whether there was any way to mitigate the risks posed by an increase in fuel trucks on Highway 6.

In The Pas, Mayor Jim Scott said Omnitrax’s locomotives are still sitting unused in the rail yard. Though the town is still served by the CN Rail tracks from Winnipeg, he’s worried about local businesses that ship north, and said Ottawa hasn’t reached out.

“It just seems ridiculous that we have a railroad, and someone owns that railroad, and they’ve just walked away from it,” he said.

When asked about the two communities, Transport Canada instead sent a statement regarding economic problems in Churchill. “The government is exploring all options toward the repair and long-term operation of the rail line,” wrote spokeswoman Annie Joannette.

She also said Omnitrax has not responded to an Oct. 13 legal threat, asking to repair the line by Nov. 12 or face a $18.8-million clawback of federal funds invested in 2008 to rehabilitate the rail line.

Both Fenske and Scott said they believe their communities’ transport woes started as a result of that legal threat.

A local entrepreneur said he’s struggled to get any official interest on a Chinese state-owned company that’s offered to fix the rail line.

Glen Behl, operations manager of Fluey Trading, is behind hundreds of shipments of canola oil, fish and other Canadian products to China. He recently helped shepherd a Chinese firm’s attempt to get its cold-weather pothole sealant onto Winnipeg roads.

However, he said he has had far less success with the feds, the province and Churchill itself.

Behl said Qilu Transportation Development Group was looking in late August for infrastructure projects the company could invest in, make a profit from a decade-long levy and return to local hands. Based in Shandong province, the state-run company reportedly has a mandate to invest US$7 billion of government funds abroad.

“Traditionally, China loves Canada; it’s just a historical thing,” Behl said.

Sources familiar with the town’s operations said Churchill has been approached by dozens of foreign companies, proposing everything from airships, pipelines and tunnels, to new types of rail tracks.

Behl feels his idea is more trustworthy.

“That’s a head-scratcher,” he said. “You think you’d want to call back someone from your own province.”

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca