© Cole Burston/Bloomberg FilesA Canadian National Railway Co. container at the Intermodal Terminals in Brampton, Ont.
Greg Sears was supposed to deliver 90 tonnes of his canola crop to a grain elevator near Grande Prairie, Alta., about 500 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, on Oct. 6. But before he left his farm, a local rep at Viterra Canada Inc., a major grain exporter, called and told him to hold off, likely for several weeks.
"That's $75,000 to $100,000 of product that I'm not going to get a cheque for any time soon," Sears said.
About 24 hours earlier, a bridge burned down on the Canadian National Railway Co. line, about 95 kilometres to the south, severing the only rail link in or out of Grande Prairie and causing backlogs for the grain shippers who depend on that track to get their product to port.CN said the severed line only moves a fraction of the total grain coming off fields in Western Canada. But for grain farmers and exporters,
the bridge fire was another example of the fragility of the national supply lines that connect one of the world's most important bread baskets with seaports and global markets."An entire economy is relying on these little ribbons of steel through Canada," said Sears, who serves as board chair of the Alberta Wheat Commission, a farm lobby group. "One bridge washout or fire or any type of event can cause some major impacts."
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