RAIL INDUSTRY
C
IN
ANAD’
FULL STEAM AHEAD DUSTR OES
AS RAI Y G
With the traditional Canadian mainstays of oil and gas and mining in something of a decline, the rail industry is forging ahead, as Mark E Johnson found when he spoke to some key professionals in the sector.
L
‘T
he mainline is the pulse of the nation’ is a phrase sometimes affectionately bandied about by Canadian rail-sector workers. Indeed, the Canadian Pacific
Railway, which links the East to the Pacific, was crucial in the settlement of Western Canada. Today, the rail network offers a crucial economic lifeline for
transporting freight over the country’s vast distances. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the rail sector has been suffering somewhat thanks to the oil price collapse, though there remain causes for optimism. Historically, Canadian rail has predominantly been a freight
business. While trains do move passengers through some of the more densely populated eastern provinces, such as Ontario, this is a relatively small component of the Canadian market, employing only around 7.5 per cent of the workforce. Freight, meanwhile, is big business for a country with a huge
population spread. The Railway Association of Canada (RAC) says that, over the last few years, rail has facilitated more than CAD75
billion in trade. Railways are the only mode of transportation in Canada responsible for funding and maintaining their own infrastructure, and they invest about 20 per cent of their annual revenue back into the network. In 2013, that added up to CAD1.8 billion in capital expenditures. Operating revenue was trending upwards and grew by 5.5 per
cent to CAD13.3 billion from 2012 to 2013. With the oil price collapse that has seen prices fall from USD110 per barrel to less than USD50, oil by rail has taken a significant hit that has hurt the sector. Shipments to the US have plunged by more than a third to 112,000
barrels per day in July, according to US data, undercutting industry forecasts that predicted volumes of 700,000 per day by the end of 2016. The natural resources industries are, in the words of Ben
Llewellyn, recruitment and operations manager for SSA Canada, “dilapidated at the minute”. He adds, “There isn’t much work. The oil prices are ridiculously low. So there won’t be high recruitment needs at the moment. It’s a knock-on effect of the resources crisis that’s happening over here.”
14 | Re:locate | Canada Spring 2016
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52