February 26, 2020
Statistics Canada announced that the country's railways carried 32.4 million tonnes of freight in December, down slightly (-0.8%) from December 2018.
This marked the fourth consecutive month of a year-over-year decline and the first decrease reported for the month of December in 10 years.
The Federal agency reports that non-intermodal operations (carloads) accounted for all of the decline, decreasing 3.8% year over year to 26.1 million tonnes. Loadings of iron ores and concentrates (-14.6% or -751 000 tonnes) were down sharply. Loadings of wheat (-14.0% or -319 000 tonnes) posted the second largest decline in tonnage. Loadings of potash (-15.6% or -313 000 tonnes) declined year over year for the sixth month in a row.
Partly offsetting these declines were increases in loadings of coal (+12.0% or +347 000 tonnes), canola (+19.0% or +167 000 tonnes), other cereal grains (+27.1% or +130 000 tonnes), other oil seeds and nuts and other agricultural products (+57.9% or +117 000 tonnes) and fuel oil and crude petroleum (+4.5% or +97 000 tonnes).
Intermodal traffic remained steady, rising 1.7% from the same period in 2018 to 2.9 million tonnes in December. Freight traffic coming from US rail connections rose significantly by 26.7% to 3.3 million tonnes.