Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that the decision for his government to call for binding arbitration at Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) was made “reluctantly” – but it was the only logical move.
“Unfortunately, CN and CPKC took the deeply unhelpful decision last Thursday to lock out employees after talks reached an impasse,” Trudeau said in a speech in Winnipeg on Wednesday to a meeting of the International Union of Operating Engineers, according to a CBC report.
“That came with a cost of over a billion dollars of shipments per day … and it raised serious public safety concerns, with everything from propane for remote hospitals to chlorine for safe drinking water being transported on our rails.”
