How the Rail Stoppage May Impact Food Costs and Supply

With Canada’s two main rail companies beginning an unprecedented work stoppage due to a failure to reach an agreement with a union, two food experts say Canadians could soon begin seeing empty grocery shelves and paying more for food. “As soon as you go from rail to wheels, you’re likely doubling your transportation costs. And at some point, someone is going to have to pay for that, and that’s likely going to be the consumer,” Sylvain Charlebois, a professor at Dalhousie University, told The Epoch Times. The railway companies, the Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC), and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, which represents 9,300 employees, have failed to come to an agreement to keep the workers on the job. As a result, 6,000 CN workers and 3,300 CPKC workers were locked out by the companies, and trains across Canada came to a stop on Aug. 22....