The provinces of Quebec and Ontario announced that all non-essential business in their respective provinces must temporarily close by midnight tomorrow night – (Ontario 23:59 hours, March 24, Quebec 0001 hours, March 25).
The list of Quebec essential businesses allowed to continue can be found at the following link.
https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coronavirus/essential-services-commercial-activities-covid19/
Ontario has not yet published its list, but the Premier’s announcement can be found at
https://news.ontario.ca/opo/en/2020/03/ontario-orders-the-mandatory-closure-of-all-non-essential-workplaces-to-fight-spread-of-covid-19.html
The Province of Manitoba is providing relief from spring thaw weight restrictions for some essential commodities and the provincial announcement can be found at
https://www.gov.mb.ca/mit/srr/essentcomm.html
The major ports all indicate that they are functioning normally, but the ports and terminals are all following the Health Canada prescribed procedures to minimize the risk to all personnel accessing their facilities.
Regarding international marine carriers, crew changes are necessary and non-Canadians exchanging in Canadian ports are allowed to enter and leave Canada by air, despite the border closure to most non-Canadian citizens.
The Transport Canada notice on this item can be found at
https://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/marinesafety/bulletins-2020-06-eng.htm
The trucking industry has not reported any significant delays due to the border closure. Limited information from FMA members indicates that there are some delivery delays related to trucking, but there are no reports of serious capacity problems.
Limited information from the railways indicates that their networks are fluid and that they have the capacity to meet current demand for most commodity groups.
FMA will be participating in the Commodity Supply Chain Table conference call on Friday, which is an initiative of Natural Resources Canada, supported by Transport Canada. The government people will be looking for feedback from the industry associations on the current service levels being experienced, primarily by rail and truck. In tomorrow’s bulletin, we will have a very brief questionnaire to which we will ask the FMA membership to respond. As always, individual company information will be kept confidential and only aggregated information will be passed on.
Our focus in the FMA updates will be on supply-chain impacts. In this connection, it would be appreciated if FMA members could keep us informed of impacts on your respective operations, particularly any supply chain disruptions. This will be helpful in our continuing outreach to members and our communications with the government and with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. As always, all individual company information will be kept confidential.
