Concerns over Alberta’s economy are rising as the CN Rail strike continues.
Employees officially hit the picket lines on Tuesday as they look to address issues they have with the company including safety, time-off provisions, and lifetime caps on benefits.
Premier Jason Kenney says the longer the strike goes on, the longer Alberta will be heavily impacted.
“Ours is a commodity-based economy and that means our farmers, our energy producers, and others lose market access and our economy loses millions of dollars a day.”
The government of Alberta has been working on transporting more crude-by-rail. This includes giving operators from relief if they ship their product using rail cars.
Alberta’s Energy Minister Sonya Savage noted CN Rail alone transports around 170,000 barrels of Alberta oil a day.
“Any disruption in shipments would have serious consequences for an economy that is already dealing with severe bottlenecks due to cancelled and delayed pipelines.”
We need urgent action to stop the CN Rail strike and ensure Alberta exports, especially our crops and oil, can get to market without any additional delay. pic.twitter.com/Z4y7LDYivO
— Jason Kenney (@jkenney) November 21, 2019
Overall, Kenney says this strike will only hurt Alberta’s oil industry.
“This is going to cost the government and taxpayers dearly in terms of forgone revenues, it will widen the price differential meaning we get less for the energy that belongs to Albertans, it will mean more oil backing up into our storage tanks – it’s truly a serious problem.”
Meanwhile, there’s currently no timeline on when the strike could potentially come to an end.
