Funded through the Government of Alberta Industry Advancement Grant, the initiative is supported by $916,535 in provincial funding.

Wheels of Opportunity is a workforce initiative led by Safety Buzz Campus, looking to fill the gap where Cypress County and surrounding area has optimal irrigated farmland, but is limited in trained workers. Youth employment is high and the agricultural industry has many in the age bracket that is nearing retirement.

Why It Matters: Keeping agricultural supply chains moving with much-needed and properly drivers critical for Alberta with expanded employment opportunities for the next generation.

In partnership with Prairie Rose School Division, municipalities, employment agencies and agricultural leaders, the innovative program is designed to address one of the most critical challenges facing the region – the severe shortage of qualified drivers in the agricultural industry.

Through Wheels of Opportunity funding, participants receive Class 3 licensing, air-brakes certification, safety and equipment training, professional development, and ag-specific hazard awareness. It totals an investment of over $3,600 per participant. With a state-of-the-art simulator, participants can safely practice in diverse conditions before hitting the road, giving participants, particularly youth under 18, a head start on their careers.

The Employment Pathway Grant helps cover costs for advanced training, including Class 1 and Class 1 upgrades.

Alberta is currently short 4,000-plus commercial drivers, which negatively impacts rural economies.

Participants can safely practice in diverse conditions before hitting the road, giving participants, particularly youth under 18, a head start on their careers.

The post Wheels of Opportunity tackles agriculture industry driver shortage appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

A record volume of intermodal traffic — mainly containers — also buoyed freight volumes.

Canadian railways moved 376.6 million tonnes of freight in 2025, down 0.2 per cent from 2024.

”A bumper 2025 harvest and strong global demand meant that grain shipments by rail remained strong throughout the year,” StatCan said.

• Carloadings of wheat increased by double digits, year-over-year each month from January to November, except for February.
• Annual carloadings of wheat rose by 14.3 per cent or 3.9 million tonnes to reach 31.1 million tonnes in 2025.
• Other cereal grains loadings also saw substantial growth in January — up 103.9 per cent — and September — up 72.7 per cent.
• Total loadings of cereals grew by 23.4 per cent to 7.8 million tonnes in 2025 — the largest increase since 2018.
• Carloadings of canola fell by 12.4 per cent to 8.8 million tonnes in 2025. StatCan attributed this to trade tensions with China.
• Freight loadings from U.S. rail connections saw significant double-digit year-over-year decreases for much of 2025.
• Annual tonnage fell by 13.3 per cent compared to 2024 at 39.3 million tonnes. That’s the lowest annual level since 2020.
• In 2023 and 2024, freight traffic from U.S. rail connections to Canada represented an average of 12 per cent of total rail tonnage per month. In 2025, the average share ranged by quarter between 10.0 per cent and 10.7 per cent.
• Loadings of fuel oils, crude petroleum and lumber fell sharply over the year. Coal shipments rose.

The post Strong grain shipments by rail offset freight losses in 2025 appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The province says the action was taken following inspections, audits and targeted investigations of driver training schools and carriers.

“It was a targeted crackdown. We saw an alarming increase in the amount of bridge strikes and calls and letters coming into the department of unsafe trucking incidents. This was a bigger, broader audit of the driver training schools that we took the initiative to try to crack down on this disturbing trend,” said Devin Dreeshen, minister of transportation and economic corridors.

“Our families’ safety won’t be put at risk by reckless operators who ignore the rules. Anyone cutting corners or operating unsafe trucks will be removed from our roads. Alberta truckers have earned a reputation as some of the most trusted drivers in the country, and we will not allow a few bad actors to undermine that trust.”

Thirteen commercial trucking companies have also been removed from Alberta’s roads due to poor on-road performance, unsafe equipment or failure to meet mandatory safety standards. Of those, seven were identified as “chameleon” carriers – companies that try to avoid regulatory oversight by changing names, creating new entities or relocating operations across jurisdictions.

The provincial government said it is working with federal and provincial/territorial partners to strengthen enforcement across jurisdictions. Work is also underway by the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators to develop a national database to address the loophole that carriers currently use to exploit gaps in inter-provincial data sharing and enforcement.

“We’ve developed a made-in-Alberta change for a Class One learning pathway,” Dreeshen said.

“Eventually we want trucking to be a Red Seal. You look at a Red Seal certification for a chef, we think obviously there should be that point of pride in the trucking industry, but it takes five other provinces to recognize it as a trade. That’s something we’re still working with other provinces to be able to officially have trucking as an apprenticeship.”

This would include requiring 125 to 133 in-truck training hours, well above the national mandatory entry-level training minimum.

“Elevating driver training standards to align with the established benchmarks of a designated trade with the ultimate goal of achieving Red Seal designation for the transportation industry represents a significant and positive step forward,” Don MacDonald, interim chair of the Professional Truck Training Alliance of Canada, said in a press release.

“This initiative is supported by the (PTTAC) and will not only contribute to safer roadways but also foster greater professionalism and integrity across all sectors of the industry.”

Alberta is also targeting the misclassified driver scheme known as Drivers Inc., in which companies hire drivers as independent contractors to avoid payroll taxes and benefits.

These drivers often lack proper training and oversight and are vulnerable to exploitation. In July 2025, a week-long commercial driver status and classification check stop revealed that 20 per cent of the 195 drivers who were stopped were suspected of being misclassified, including several temporary foreign workers.

To further strengthen the trucking industry, the Alberta government is looking to changes in its Traffic Safety Act. One regulatory change would be requiring the driver’s driving record to follow the individual instead of the carrier with which the driver is associated .

“If it’s an issue with the vehicle, it’s obviously not the driver’s fault. Those types of incidences should follow the carrier. But, if it is driver error, we’re seeing drivers jump into other carriers without the new carrier knowing the past driving record of that driver. We’re making sure there’s more accountability in the trucking industry.”

Dreeshen said these measures will benefit the agriculture sector.

“Maybe I’m a little biased because I am a (fifth-generation) farmer. Truckers used to have the reputation of being the best out on the road. You’d have people that would be following semis because they know … the trail that the semi is blazing in the middle of winter is good. Hats off to the amazing truckers that we have doing the work that they do every day to put put food on store shelves and to make sure that we have such a high quality life that we have.”

The post Alberta cracks down on trucking industry appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

StatCan published its major grain deliveries report for August 2025 on Sept. 25. In total, 3.588 million tonnes were delivered compared to 4.329 million in August 2024. The agency noted that tariffs placed on Canadian goods headed to the United States may have an impact on deliveries.

All wheat deliveries in August totaled 2.259 million tonnes compared to 2.321 million one year earlier. For durum, 279,584 tonnes were delivered last month, up from 244,560 tonnes in August 2024.

Canola deliveries fell below one million tonnes for the first time since August 2023, dropping to their lowest monthly total since May 2022. StatCan reported 621,555 tonnes of the oilseed were delivered in August, compared to 1.32 million tonnes in August of last year.

August barley deliveries were 379,238 tonnes, slightly more than the 375,071 tonnes delivered in August 2024. For oats, 278,097 tonnes were delivered, up from 267,271 tonnes one year earlier. Rye deliveries were up from 29,375 tonnes in August 2024 to 38,098 last month. Flaxseed deliveries were down from 15,127 tonnes in August 2024 to 11,953 tonnes a year later.

Saskatchewan provided 36.6 per cent of all deliveries, followed by Manitoba with 22.2 per cent and Alberta at 20.4 per cent.

The post August grain deliveries down from 2024: StatCan appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Premiers Doug Ford and Danielle Smith signed two Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) Monday in Calgary. The agreements are mostly focused on the exchange of energy and minerals, though they could also open new trade routes between Western and Eastern Canada.

Why it matters: U.S. tariffs and interprovincial trade barriers remain among the biggest barriers for trade stability and profitability in agriculture.

The agreements will “open new markets and create thousands of new jobs across Canada” and diversify trading partners, Ford said.

Smith said the MOUs are meant to advance pipelines and pathways for exports of energy and critical minerals to markets across Canada and the world.

“Through this agreement, we’ll work together to explore ways to improve network corridors that better connect our energy and critical minerals to markets here at home as well as around the globe.”

Smith said Alberta is seeking to add more rail lines to increase access to Ontario in areas like the Ring of Fire, refineries in southern ontario and a deep-water port in James Bay.

“Let’s get some icebreakers in there, maybe build out some additional rail and road infrastructure, and it could be a multi-purpose port, not just for oil … but also food, fibres, manufactured goods, critical minerals,” she said.

She said this would allow shipping not only to Canada’s East Coast but also to trade partners in Europe.

“Let’s work on that. And maybe I’ll sign another MOU with my friend Francois Legault (Premier of Quebec) at some later point to see if we can get further east.”

Ford said the MOUs between the two provinces are critical at a time when U.S. tariffs are still threatening trade in Canada.

“President Trump’s tariffs and the economic uncertainty they’ve created, they’re hurting workers and businesses in every part of our great country,” he said. “Steel makers and aluminum workers in Ontario and Quebec, fishermen and women in B.C. and Atlantic Canada, farmers across the Prairies, including right here in Alberta.”

“We’re doing this because we need to unlock the full potential of our economy. We need to tear down the barriers and red tape that have held us back for far, far too long,” he added. “This is how we make ourselves less reliant on the United States. This is how we secure the future of Canada.”

The two provinces will also launch a joint feasibility study to determine the best strategies, financing and endpoints for these projects.

Monday’s signings come as Ontario has made efforts to reduce trade barriers with other provinces, including last month’s agreement with Saskatchewan.

The post Ontario, Alberta sign new agreements on energy trade appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

ADM has declared force majeure in southern Louisiana, the report said, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The company did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Force majeure declarations are intended to suspend a company’s contractual liabilities for supply outages in the wake of disasters that lie beyond its control.

The post ADM declares force majeure along US Gulf terminals, Bloomberg News reports appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Farmers have repeatedly blocked Poland’s eastern border over the past year in protest against food imports such as grain from the east, including from Ukraine.

Tusk told reporters in the Baltic Sea port of Gdansk, in the north of Poland, that the new terminal there will be at the disposal of the Polish state.

“It will not only perform commercial functions, but will be a safety device in the hands of the Polish state as part of protecting Polish interests and Polish farmers,” Tusk said.

Poland’s Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Arkadiusz Marchewka said that the entire investment would cost 500 million zloty (US$122.4 million).

The terminal’s trans-shipment capacity in 2026 will be and initial two million tonnes, which will then be increased to three million tonnes, Marchewka added.

The post Poland to build new grain terminal in Gdansk to bolster food security appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

When the conflict between the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference union and both Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Canadian National Railway came to a head Aug. 22, trains were fully stopped for less than 24 hours.

After the federal government referred the matter to the Canadian Industrial Relations Board for binding arbitration, employees at CN were back at work Aug. 23. The stoppage at CPKC lingered longer, but trains were all running within four days of the initial lockouts and strike action.

The rail labour dispute percolated for months before exploding just as harvest got underway. The federal government intervened by referring the matter to the Canadian Industrial Relations Board for binding arbitration.

Experts say recovery will take more time than the stoppage lasted.

“It takes a long time to make up for that lost time,” said Mark Hemmes, president of Quorum Corporation, which monitors Canada’s grain shipping industry, after workers had returned.

“And while the lockout was only four days, you really have to think about it in terms of 10 to 12 days because of the embargoes that were put on the railways as they positioned themselves for an orderly shutdown.”

Railways limited shipment of volatile materials, including some fertilizer, in anticipation of the stoppage.

Hemmes noted that cars loaded at Canada’s ports will have been unloaded and left on tracks. It will take time for the railways to move those cars back into position.

“We like to refer to it as the bathtub effect,” he said. “If you take water in a big tub and you keep tilting it back and forth, you end up with big waves at one end or the other and it takes a while for that to settle out.”

The situation will force railways to prioritize shipments, starting with perishable goods, chlorine for municipalities and animal feed. From there, they’ll work on the backlog of more competitive commodities.

“That has a tendency to be the intermodal stuff,” said Hemmes. “The container ports at Vancouver and Montreal will get a lot of attention first, because they’ve got to clear out the container terminals, which are probably pretty full at this point because the boats kept coming but there was nothing taking stuff away.”

Grain tends to fall farther down the priority list. Hemmes expects that agriculture won’t return to normal for six weeks, at best.

“I think we’re going to have to wait until October before we see something resembling normal rail service.”

Wade Sobkowich, executive director of the Western Grain Elevator Association, said farmers won’t be unscathed. Timing of the dispute was unfortunate because harvest had just begun when the labour issue picked up steam.

“We never have excess rail capacity at this time of year. So, you never truly recover until you get yourself into a period of lower volumes, when things drop off in the spring and summer,” Sobkowich said.

Grain companies will have deferred sales due to uncertainty about service suspension, he added.

“So now you’re selling more grain outside that peak period before the Australian harvest, so you’re going to get less value for some of the crop due to this stoppage.”

The rail halt didn’t last long enough to significantly disrupt the grain elevator system. Sobkowich said he’s fairly certain elevators will be able to handle 2024 harvest volumes.

“We weren’t right in the thick of harvest quite yet. I think there’s room in the country elevator system, so farmers can deliver to most, if not all, locations.”

Reputational damage

When rail employees voted to strike earlier this year, Sobkowich expressed concern that a stoppage would damage Canada’s status as a reliable trade partner. That concern still stands.

“There will be reputational damage, and how long that damage is going to last will depend on what we do from here,” he said. “Are we going to be able to make it through the rest of the year, or the next three or the next five years, without any disruptions? You have to earn that reputation back.”

Bruce Curran, a University of Manitoba law professor who specializes in labour law, said that even though the teamsters union plans to challenge the back-to-work ruling, disruption is unlikely for at least another year.

The binding arbitration decision that sets terms of the bargaining agreement will happen in coming weeks. Curran suggested the judicial review sought by the union will not come to court for about six months. Even if the court finds that the back-to-work decision was a mistake, it is unlikely the collective agreement arising from arbitration would be torn up.

“That will remain in place for the duration of their collective agreement, which will probably be about three years or so,” he said.

On Aug. 30, Reuters reported that the union had filed the aforementioned court challenges.

A repeat?

A simultaneous negotiation of collective bargaining agreements for both railways is unlikely to occur again, Curran added.

“These collective agreements have not been synced in over 70 years. I think that the arbitrator will also be clear that they’re not going to be synced in the future, so as not to lead us into the same position that we’re in here.”

He thinks the situation devolved due to a strategic blunder. In 2020, the federal government announced new regulations on safety and fatigue management for railways, with a scheduled implementation from 2022 to 2024.

CN’s collective agreement was scheduled to be negotiated in 2022, but it arranged to start negotiations a year later to address the new rules. That delay aligned it with CPKC’s negotiations.

“This gave the Teamsters a tremendous increase in their bargaining power because they had the ability to shut down the entire country at the same time,” Curran said.

To avoid a repeat, the standard three-year collective agreement with CN and its employees will likely revert to three years from 2022, when their agreement was originally going to expire. CPKC’s collective agreement may run three years from December 2023 to 2026, he suggested.

That would mean another labour dispute wouldn’t potentially arise until late 2025 or early 2026.

The post Agriculture weighs damage of rail stoppage appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Mid-August, in particular, saw louder cries for either a deal between Canada’s two major railways and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, or a referral for binding arbitration to force a deal and keep the Canadian economy on the literal tracks.

The latter option got loud support from too many provincial and federal farm groups to name.

Ultimately, those crying for 11th-hour federal intervention didn’t get it. Instead, the government swooped in at three in the metaphorical morning — just in the nick of too late — and too late to avoid some damage.

The stoppage had already begun by the time Labour and Seniors Minister Steven MacKinnon announced he was punting the matter to the Canada Industrial Relations Board. The railways had already been winding down shipment of certain hazardous materials, fertilizer being one of them, in anticipation of the halt.

It is worth noting that focusing only on the word “strike” ignores the dual sides of the dispute. Employees at one company hit the picket lines (a notice against the other came later, and was dropped before it started when the CIRB ordered everyone back to work). The other half of the situation is the lockout. Both railways locked out employees.

It’s an important distinction. While it’s never good for agriculture when rail cars don’t move, the scope of this potential work stoppage and its unfortunate timing made it a crisis. For the first time, the two major railways, the effective duopoly of rail ownership in Canada, were going to be stalled at the same time, right at harvest.

Keeping the companies’ actions in the narrative helps underline the way lack of competition in Canada’s rail ownership played into the whole fiasco. It boils down to the fact that a labour dispute impacting only two companies was able to threaten total shutdown of one of Canada’s key economic arteries.

If your dispute is big enough that you can hold the Canadian economy hostage, all parties then get to deal with the government getting in your face to make sure you don’t, in fact, hold the economy hostage.

The same lack of competition means that these labour talks, which have such economically devastating implications when they fail, involve much higher stakes. Little competition among companies means little competition among employers. If employees are getting a deal they don’t like, they have little ability to vote with their feet while still staying in the industry they’ve built careers in.

Lack of competition in agriculture is not a new issue. Addressing the problem, however, is a much deeper challenge.

In mid-August, Canada got a new political party. The Canadian Future Party, which is marketing itself as a centrist option for those disillusioned with Liberals and Conservatives, included increased agricultural competition in its platform.

That’s a tall order. It would mean confronting the fact that Canada’s competition law needs more muscle and much sharper teeth. It would require political willingness to tick off big businesses.

Large corporations always give reasons why moves to bolster competition are a bad idea. Look at the railway response to a piloted interswitching radius jump last year. Grain shippers said it increased competitive tension; railways argued that, among other things, it would put them at a competitive disadvantage with U.S. companies and be expensive.

“That means fewer available carloads for Canadian railroaders to move across Canada. It may also mean less available work for port workers if shipments end up in Seattle rather than Vancouver,” Railway Association of Canada president Marc Brazeau told a Senate committee in May 2023.

Canadian agriculture, and Canada in general, need to foster more competition. But if you’re already a long way down a bad road, the way back is going to be equally long and bumpy.

The post Lack of competition exacerbated rail labour dispute appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

12:01 AM EDT on August 22, after negotiations that began last year failed to bring about a resolution to the dispute, CN and CPKC announced at that they would lockout their employees who are members of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC). The move affects roughly 9,000 employees at the two companies.

“Throughout this process, CN and CPKC have shown themselves willing to compromise rail safety and tear families apart to earn an extra buck,” said Paul Boucher, President, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, in a release issued shortly after the lockout was announced.

In its announcement of the lockout, CN said that they had been committed to avoid the work stoppage right up to the deadline and that the union did not respond to a last-minute offer by the railway to bridge the gap.

“This offer improved wages and would have seen employees work less days in a month by aligning hours of service in the collective agreement with federally mandated rest provisions,” read the announcement released shortly after midnight. “Without an agreement or binding arbitration, CN had no choice but to finalize a safe and orderly shutdown and proceed with a lockout.”

For their part, CPKC said they had bargained in good faith in the months since the TCRC contract expired late last year, but a negotiated outcome appeared out of reach.

“The TCRC leadership continues to make unrealistic demands that would fundamentally impair the railway’s ability to serve our customers with a reliable and cost-competitive transportation service,” read the announcement.

The CPCK release went on to say the only way forward is for the parties to engage in binding arbitration.

Both railways had previously requested binding arbitration. Most recently, CN made a formal request to Minister of Labour Steven MacKinnon on August 9, but the government rejected the request a few days later.

The post Canada’s railways grind to a halt appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.