Sask. grain farmers say strike at B.C. export terminals a 'gut punch'

Saskatchewan grain farmers say harvest season could be derailed after workers at six major grain export terminals in Metro Vancouver walked off the job Tuesday morning.

The Grain Workers Union Local 333 and the Vancouver Terminal Elevators Association said they failed to reach a deal before the strike deadline.

An hour after the strike began Tuesday, Canada's Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon said that, at his request, the two parties had "agreed to resume negotiations with federal mediators."

"After a bumper crop summer, Canadian farmers and businesses need to get their harvest to market. Parties need to work hard to get a deal," MacKinnon wrote in a post on X.

Ian Boxall, a grain farmer and president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan (APSA), said the dispute will cost farmers money, even if it is resolved quickly.

"If that trickle down effect gets to the point where the elevators here at home are full, we can't deliver our grain. We don't get paid till we deliver our grain," Boxall told CBC News on Tuesday from the seat of a combine on his farm near Tisdale. 

"We're taking off our crop now. Farmers are going to need some cash flow and going to need some money and it's going to have a huge effect on producers, and hence a huge effect on the Canadian economy."

According to Grain Growers of Canada, more than half of all Canadian-grown grain last year moved through the affected terminals, and the stoppage will halt 100,000 metric tonnes of commodities arriving at the terminals each day and cost $35 million daily in lost exports.

The harvesting, delivery and export of different grains are timed to ensure they are delivered in time to be processed by the customer before it spoils, and runs at 100 per cent capacity every day, said Boxall and Jake Leguee, a third-generation farmer who grows canola, wheat, flax, durum and green lentils near Fillmore.

"Especially at this time of the year during harvest, any disruptions to any part of it backfills the entire system, and it can take weeks or even longer to solve, you know, even small delays and interruptions," Leguee, who is also the board chair of the Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission, told CBC's Power and Politics on Monday before the strike began. 

"So this is a big deal and it directly affects us here on our farm."

Calls for measures to prevent disruptions

Boxall and Leguee urged MacKinnon to ensure the parties reach a fair agreement quickly and said Ottawa needs to look at ways to prevent such disruptions before they begin, including possibly designating grain elevator workers as essential under the federal Labour Code.

The terminal workers union have called for MacKinnon to order the Canada Industrial Relations Board to intervene, after saying its most recent contract proposal was met with silence from the employer.

Boxall said that after last month's rail stoppages and China's recent decision to investigate Canadian canola in retaliation for Canada's tariffs on electric vehicles, the beginning of the strike feels like "gut punch" to Saskatchewan's grain producers.

"Again? Again? Like that's immediately what I think," he said. "it's just a never-ending cycle of stuff that comes up that affects our supply chain."

Both men said disruptions like these harm the credibility of the Canadian exporters farmers sell their yields to, and could impact what prices farmers can get for their products if overseas customers decide to look elsewhere and demand decreases.

"We can never get in-between the rights of a worker and and the rights of an employer. But at the same token, these entities need to understand how important they are to Canadians and the Canadian economy. And I think it's time we had a bigger look at that," said Boxall.