Off to a bad start

Canada's Federal Election took place in the third week of October.  It took a full month for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to put together his Cabinet, and when the new team was unveiled this week, it contained an awful lot of familiar faces, particularly in the most senior positions.

Trudeau is taking the same leisurely approach to recalling Parliament. Reportedly he did not want the Commons to reconvene until the new year, but was somehow persuaded to bring the date forward to December 5. Somehow he and his advisers seem to have failed to notice that the union representing train operators at CN, the larger of Canada's national railroads, had set a strike date for this past Monday.  With no deal in place, the strike duly began and is now in its fourth day.

Usually governments allow a threatened strike at either CN or the smaller CP to start, but then quickly legislate the workers back onto the job in order to avoid problems for the national economy. Trudeau's insouciant approach means that can't happen this time, and the damage is rapidly mounting. 

The Province of Quebec is set to run out of propane by the end of the weekend, posing dangers to sectors from health care to agriculture.  Similar problems are emerging in Northern Ontario.  In Alberta and Saskatchewan, oil-by-rail shipments to US refineries have been drastically reduced, deepening the discount at which western Canadian oil already trades against benchmark crudes. Farmers in the same provinces have lost the ability to ship their products just as harvest season is coming to an end, raising the possibility of crops being left to rot in the fields.

The election left Trudeau without a majority in the Commons.  His Liberals were completely shut out in Alberta and Saskatchewan and badly mauled by a resurgent Bloc Quebecois in Quebec. For the first time in decades, national unity is top of mind in political circles. If Trudeau recognizes the need to reach out to those three Provinces, his lack of action regarding the CN strike is a pretty strange way of showing it.