Province must act, for Churchill’s sake

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This article was published 21/07/2017 (3012 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As anyone who paid attention in high school science class can tell you, the law of inertia states that a body at rest will remain at rest unless an external force acts upon it.

For the sake of the people of Churchill, one can only hope Premier Brian Pallister paid attention in science class.

The situation involving the idled northern-Manitoba port, the damaged railway that is supposed to connect it to the rest of the province and the resulting supply crisis affecting its 900 stranded citizens is, as Newton’s first law of motion might suggest, very much at rest. And unless an external force acts upon it, quickly and decisively, Churchill’s population is in a heap of trouble.

It’s clear that Omnitrax, the Denver-based company that owns the Port of Churchill and the floodwater-damaged Hudson Bay Railway, will not be the external force that gets the supply trains back in motion. Officials from the company held a technical briefing in Winnipeg Tuesday, in which they declared repairs to the rail line will cost between $20 million and $60 million, would take about 60 days to complete, and — here’s the tricky part, for Mr. Pallister and his federal-government counterparts on the Churchill file — will absolutely, positively not be paid for by Omnitrax.

“We cannot justify spending the resources to repair this line,” was the blunt assessment of Omnitrax chief commercial officer Peter Touesnard, who added that the railway “is not economically viable.”

After two months of foot-dragging and inaction-justifying misinformation, Omnitrax has made its position clear, stating that the railway, no longer viable as a business concern, should be viewed as an essential service and treated by government as a public utility.

Omnitrax, which has been handed tens of millions of taxpayer dollars since 1997, had recently been looking to sell the combined assets to local, First Nations-led interests — a transaction that would depend on another injection of federal and provincial funds.

In other words, Omnitrax wants to be paid to abandon its Manitoban interests.

But if, as it seems, Omnitrax views the Hudson Bay Railway as having no commercial value, then it stands to reason the company could simply cut its losses by walking away.

What’s needed now is for government to take the necessary steps to repatriate the port and railway and get down to the business of re-establishing Churchill’s links to desperately needed supplies and almost-as-crucial tourism revenue.

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But which government will make the first move? On Wednesday, Mr. Pallister stated Manitoba won’t act on the railway-repair issue until the full cost is known and Ottawa makes a decision about the port’s future. The federal government, for its part, said it still expects Omnitrax to live up to its agreements regarding the port and railway.

For practical purposes, Omnitrax is out. The feds are dithering and it’s safe to say Churchill is a long way from the top of the Trudeau government’s priority list.

Expecting swift action from Ottawa is inviting disappointment.

Which, of course, puts Churchill’s desperate disconnectedness back into the province’s hands. Mr. Pallister has shown great tenacity when it comes to demonstrating what he’s absolutely not willing to do — sign on to health-care accords, settle on a carbon-pricing framework, get on board with marijuana legalization — but on the Churchill file, waiting for someone else to make the first move is no longer an option.

If the premier decides to hold his breath on this one, it’ll be the heating-fuel-deprived residents of Churchill who end up turning blue.