Northern anger boils as OmniTrax cuts threaten Churchill, Man.
This time, Arctic sovereignty issues face south — not north
The power was out across Churchill while Manitoba Hydro did some scheduled service work, so when Manitoba Growth, Enterprise and Trade Minister Cliff Cullen sat down to meet local business leaders, the gloom in the room was more than just the mood.
Churchill, Man., a Hudson Bay outpost with fewer than 1,000 full-time residents, owes its modern existence to a military base and a port; the military base closed in the 1960s and now the port is closing, leaving tourism as the major industry. Port owner OmniTrax also has reduced freight service to Churchill on the Hudson Bay Railway to once a week, a major blow to a town with no road connection to the south.
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Arctic sovereignty has often played a role in government decisions about the future of Churchill, but this time, the sovereignty issues are posed by the control a U.S. company wields over the northern town's future.
Local businessman Doug Webber tapped into the current of anger in the town when he stepped up at one of Cullen's meetings with Churchill business leaders and started firing missiles at Denver-based OmniTrax.
"It was a travesty in the first place [that] they were even given this [railway] line. To give a Canadian entity to a foreign company was nothing but gross stupidity in my opinion," Webber said.
He calls OmniTrax a "welfare recipient" of largesse from the provincial and federal governments and wants a Canadian solution to the problem.
Arctic sovereignty looks south, not north
There has been much talk about where Churchill fits in Canada's jockeying for Arctic sovereignty and about how the country could turn its back on the only deep-water port it has in the north — one uniquely connected by rail.
But this time the sovereignty issue here isn't looking north, but south, at the grip a U.S. company is holding on the grocery lists of communities all along the rail line from The Pas to Churchill.
OmniTrax suspended all rail shipments on the railway line to Churchill following a fire on a boarded-up locomotive in their yard in The Pas on Tuesday. Residents believe kids walked across the unfenced rail yard in town and set the engine on fire.
In a single call, a company based thousands of kilometres away told hundreds of people in northern Manitoba the groceries they expected to arrive Wednesday might not get there. Hours later, the company rescinded the suspension of service.
Many in Churchill believe — rightly or wrongly — that OmniTrax is not maintaining the rail line properly and hasn't kept up with repairs to the port.
"I think that the government should really look at setting up an independent watchdog that's going to watch this line and make sure that the infrastructure is held up to the standards — not HBR [Hudson Bay Rail] standards, but Via Rail standards, because Via standards are more stringent," Churchill Chamber of Commerce president Dave Daley said.
"Keep an eye on OmniTrax to make sure that our line is being maintained in a safe and operational structure."
"You know, if CN loses a locomotive, I mean, they don't put the rest of Canada on notice," Spence said, referencing the fire in The Pas.
Churchill gets the same seasons as the rest of Canada, but it also gets the bear season, the whale season and the northern lights season that all feed the tourism industry.
Each of those seasons needs supplies, but the locals say their freight is bottlenecked by lack of railway service.
"The business is there. I don't know why they went to once a week," said one man, referring to cargo stuck in Winnipeg and Thompson.
Look up here, please!
Northerners are stubborn and proud. It takes grit to deal with the weather, isolation and distance. Many carry a firm belief southerners don't care about the north, but they're shocked a jewel like Churchill is ignored.
"This is perhaps the best polar bear/whale watching ecotourism destination on the planet right now," said Mike Reimer, the operator of Churchill Wild.
Reimer said he hears that from tourists who come from around the world, but he hears little or nothing inside provincial borders.
"Government people in Manitoba have for too long been ignorant of the treasure that is Churchill and the coastline that is here on the Hudson Bay coast," said Reimer.
He relates a story to Cullen about a man moving from Iqaluit to Coral Harbour, Nunavut — 715 kilometres west — who needed to ship his snowmobile. The machine was sent almost 2,400 km south to St. Catharines, Ont., stored in a warehouse and eventually sent more than 2,300 km back up north to Coral Harbour.
A dining room set the man bought in Winnipeg ended up costing $7,000 to ship through St. Catharines, then Montreal and finally to its Nunavut destination.
Why, Reimer asked, have Churchill and Manitoba lost the valuable trade route going farther north? And is anyone doing anything to get it back?
So many questions are raised, but Cullen simply doesn't have the answers, in part because the key player in this story isn't here, isn't answering the phone, and won't speak to the media.
Google "OmniTrax" and its owner "Pat Broe" and dozens of business periodicals pop up. "Tough negotiator" seems to be a label financial writers like to give the Colorado businessman.
At one time the saviour of the port and rail line to Churchill, Broe's company's name has become a swear word in the north.
It wasn't always like this
The University of Winnipeg saw fit to grant Broe an honourary degree in 2008 and he was lauded for giving some money to charities in Churchill. Now OmniTrax is the root of all evil in some communities and even in government corridors, where politicians and staffers alike heap scorn on the company.
Cullen promised the crowd the Progressive Conservative government was looking to northern Manitobans for solutions and the dialogue would continue.
But Cullen, like so many others, can't get someone on the line from OmniTrax, either.
"They are using tactics they have used in the past to try and get governments to the table to get some short-term solutions," Cullen said.
If it's a tactic, it's part of a long game, because this story is now lurching into a third month and little, if anything at all, has been solved.
Someone in Canada needs to find Broe's personal mobile number and give him a ring, because so far any calls made by OmniTrax bear bad news.
That means communities along the line can expect food insecurity to continue, along with the pervasive sense that someone a long way away controls some of their future.
Arctic sovereignty appears to be the least of government's worries these days.