VANCOUVER - Business leaders directly affected by the lockout at British Columbia’s ports will be in Ottawa Monday looking for ways to end the crippling shutdown.
“There is no other option at this point but to ask the federal government to intervene,” says Ron MacDonald of the Council of Forest Industries.
Saying they’re losing hundreds of millions of dollars, British Columbia industries are calling for Ottawa to settle the lockout at West Coast ports, now in its seventh day. The leaders hope to persuade the federal government to pass back-to-work legislation.
Forest industry officials are particularly upset because their industry is suffering while grain shipments are still moving under special legislation.
The province’s industry groups are going to Ottawa this weekend to seek help.
However, federal Labour Minister Claudette Bradshaw has said she wants the two sides involved to settle their dispute over contracting out.
MacDonald is one of 16 executives who signed a letter to the prime minister asking him to end the dispute.
The letter reads:
“As of today (Thursday), more than $50 million worth of forest products have been sidelined or diverted to other ports at great cost to industry. As this lockout drags on, sales will be lost and valued customers will be snapped up by competing jurisdictions.” The shutdown of a half-dozen ports is costing the Canadian economy $100 million a day. And it’s not just a B.C. problem, because the ports ship all kinds of freight in and out of Canada.
Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union were locked out last Sunday after they refused to put the B.C. Maritime Employers Association’s offer to a membership vote.
The worry now is that if the closure lasts much longer it will seriously begin to interfere with Christmas and expected millennium business.
Some business leaders say if the dispute is not settled within a week, the shutdown could cause bankruptcies.
