Lockout at the Port of Montreal: “Businesses are very, very, very worried”

The simultaneous lockouts at the Port of Montreal and the Port of Vancouver, British Columbia, are of great concern to Canadian business owners.

• Also read: A lockout triggered at the Port of Montreal

Supply delays resulting from this interruption are likely to be costly.

“Businesses are very, very, very worried. […] It’s a dispute that impacts goods worth $1.2 billion every day when you add it up between British Columbia and the Port of Montreal,” says Pascal Chan, Director, Transport, Infrastructure and Construction at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, in an interview with TVA Nouvelles.

The latter emphasizes that resuming interrupted operations cannot be done by snapping one’s fingers.

The impacts of a prolonged lockout could therefore be felt for a long time, according to him.

“For every day that operations are interrupted, normally it takes about four to six days, depending on the operation, to resume. So the longer it lasts, the longer it takes to recover,” explains the director.

He specifies that the Port of Montreal is the largest container port in Eastern Canada and serves as a connection to more than 140 countries around the world.

“Goods worth almost $400 million pass through there every day. Transport Canada carried out an analysis of the impacts of a strike in 2021 and the results indicated net GDP losses of $40 million in the first week, quickly increasing to $100 million thereafter,” says Mr. Chan.

The Association of Maritime Employers (AEM) initiated a lockout at the port of Montreal at 9 p.m., Sunday evening, after the rejection, earlier in the day, of 99.7% of the offer it had submitted to the Union CUPE longshoremen.

Watch the full interview in the video above.