Transportation in northern Manitoba received scant attention under the Brian Pallister and Heather Stefanson regimes. Based on terrain, the North is hard to plow. Based on votes, it was unimportant to them. Current politicians, and the bureaucrats that advise them, must be looking for better ideas.
The Churchill trade corridor is the shortest route to international markets for the products of Western Canada. Its seasonal operations limited its use to grain exports. Scientists project that Hudson Bay will be ice-free by the end of the century. It is gaining an extra day of navigation each year, and with ice breaking, could be year-round now.
Commercial interest is growing in the trade corridor for shipping a wide range of commodities and intermodal containers. Western Canada has a diversified trade of energy products (e.g., liquified natural gas, hydrogen, ammonia), potash and minerals, agricultural and forestry products that would be more economical to ship through Hudson Bay to European, African, and South American markets.
This is good news for the Hudson Bay Railway (HBR) that has only moved about 500,000 tons on a good year. They need approximately two million tons of freight traffic per year to be self-sufficient. Canada currently exports 21 million tons of potash.
Even a small share of this traffic could be enough to support the HBR.
The HBR has a section of track over permafrost (Gillam to Churchill) that is threatened by climate change. Whether efforts to sustain the vulnerable track are successful, or it needs to be relocated, this strategic route will not be abandoned. Building 250 kilometres of new track would cost only a fraction of the investment required to build the Trans Mountain pipeline.
Specialized port terminals are needed to transload commodities and to tranship containers to ocean carriers. The costs of port terminals and securing the track require substantial financing, but these are nation-building investments that will outlive all of us and be borne largely by the users.
Manitoba has an abundance of critical minerals that could be shipped through Hudson Bay. The problem is the cost of the feeder service from the mines to the HBR. At $5 million per kilometre, mines cannot afford to build more than very short roads to the rail line. The opportunity lies in using modern cargo airships to provide the feeder service.
The revival of airship technology is well underway. Modern airships are immune to climate change because they have minimal infrastructure requirements. Economic analysis indicates that a 30-ton lift airship can compete directly with tractor-trailers over winter roads in Canada. Rigid airships that were built over 90 years ago could carry 100 tons today, and 200-ton airships are on the drawing boards.
Cargo airships also provide a solution to the melting ice roads. Climate change is shortening the usable season and increasing the risks for drivers. First Nations want permanent roads, and some larger centres should be connected, but converting all 2,400 kilometres of winter roads to gravel would exceed $10 billion. This is 20 times the amount that the Province of Manitoba spends annually ($500 million) to maintain the existing road system.
Not only does the provincial government lack the financial capacity to convert winter roads to gravel, the residents in southern Manitoba and Winnipeg are unhappy with their streets and roads. Premier Wab Kinew is hearing complaints about road infrastructure everywhere he goes in the province.
The Hudson Bay trade corridor can increase the productivity of all three Prairie provinces. Saving commodity shippers $10/ton on the transportation of hundreds of millions of tons adds up quickly. Similarly, the savings of shipping containers through Hudson Bay, rather than via the St. Lawrence, must be $500 per container or more.
Airships can provide an economically feasible alternative to building gravel roads. The impact of cargo airships on northern development are both economic and social. Lower-cost, year-round transport would relieve the overcrowding of houses in the remote communities and end food insecurity. They would also unlock the treasure chest of minerals in the North that lies beyond economic reach.
Global warming is driving changes everywhere, but the impacts are happening faster in the northern latitudes. Change creates winners and losers. On balance, Manitoba can be a winner. The local people in the North want to be winners, too. They welcome the opportunities for better incomes but not to be ignored in how change comes about. Hopefully, we have learned from history how to proceed correctly.
As it is almost one year since the NDP came to power in Manitoba and about a year from the next federal election, the time has come to have our political leaders seriously consider the future of northern transportation.
Barry E. Prentice is a professor and the director of the University of Manitoba Transport Institute, Asper School of Business.
