Will Hay River’s rail line ever be repaired?

If the rail line to Hay River isn’t fixed soon after last year’s wildfires, government officials say complications could lie ahead. But who pays the repair bill?

The rail line to Hay River carries various fuels that are then loaded onto barges and sent down the Mackenzie River during the summer resupply season.

The Hay River rail terminus is part of the reason the community is nicknamed “the hub.” The town is the end of the line. There’s no railroad to Yellowknife, so Hay River provides a central NWT destination for cargo to be transferred between road, rail, air or barge.

Except the rail link to southern Canada isn’t working.

The CN-owned line stretching south from Hay River runs through a corridor of land that was badly burned during 2023’s wildfires.

CN repaired the track from Alberta to the hamlet of Enterprise, 30 km south of Hay River, in October last year. The final leg from Enterprise to Hay River has not reopened.

In public, the NWT government and CN say they are working together.

“We continue to have discussions with our customers in the region and we are committed to working with them to find solutions that meet their needs within our existing network,” said CN spokesperson Ashley Michnowski by email.

Michnowski said last year’s reopening of the line to Enterprise meant CN had “repaired and restored service to a majority of the rail line that runs north of the Alberta border.”

At the time, CN said that work involved “more than 18,000 rail ties to repair areas damaged by the wildfires.”

In a statement to Cabin Radio, the NWT government’s Department of Infrastructure said it was “eager to see the railroad service to Hay River restored as soon as possible and is working closely with CN.”

But behind the scenes, an official with knowledge of the issue said CN had told the NWT government it will not repair the remaining track between Enterprise and Hay River unless the company is given funding – from the GNWT or another source – to do so.

The parties made no mention of this in their public responses on Monday.

Asked whether CN had resumed full operations in the South Slave and if not, what CN had told the territorial government about what was going on, the GNWT stated: “CN has not resumed full operations in the South Slave. For further information, please reach out directly to CN.”

Later in the same statement, the GNWT restated its eagerness to reopen the line and said it was “working closely with CN to reiterate this message.”

The Department of Infrastructure said that without the rail line open, “fuel will be trucked by the GNWT’s suppliers from Enterprise to Hay River so that community resupply will continue.”

Imperial Oil is also a heavy user of the Hay River rail line, the GNWT stated. Even leaving Imperial’s needs aside, the Department of Infrastructure said its own fuel operations – resupplying communities along the Mackenzie, for example – would involve some 150 truck trips between Enterprise and Hay River if there’s no rail option.

“Trucking fuel instead of railing it directly to Hay River creates the possibility of delay, adds logistical complexity, and increases wear and tear and traffic on a public highway,” the department stated.

The lack of a rail line could present a fresh obstacle after years in which ice, wildfires, floods and, conversely, low water have all had an impact on GNWT efforts to send resupply barges down the Mackenzie.

The Department of Infrastructure said it doesn’t “currently anticipate any impacts” to barge operations.

Enterprise has a rail yard by virtue of AWP Industries, led by former Hay River mayor Brad Mapes, which built a yard several years ago.

When the line as far as Enterprise reopened last October, CN said it had set up a “temporary transload facility” at the hamlet – a designated area where truckloads of cargo are transferred to rail cars for travel south, or rail freight is offloaded onto trucks for the remainder of the trip north.

Neither the GNWT nor CN gave any timeline for the track from Enterprise to Hay River to reopen.

“The GNWT is communicating regularly with communities and Indigenous governments to ensure they have the information necessary to understand the steps that are being taken to manage this situation,” the Department of Infrastructure stated.

In April, CN reported net income of around $1.1 billion for the first three months of 2024. The company’s total revenue for the same three-month period was $4.2 billion.