About 3,000 Canadian Pacific Rail employees have been off the job since Sunday and Brandon-Souris MP Larry Maguire hopes they are soon back at work.

Outstanding issues in the labour dispute include wages, benefits and pensions.

“This will have a very big impact on our farming and other manufacturing businesses as well. It impacts the delivery of fertilizer and it interrupts the payment opportunities of farmers who contract their grain. I’ve had calls from producers who had contracts to load grain this week and would have received their payments by the end of March to meet their April 1st payment.”

“It’s critical that these supply chains continue to operate.”

Maguire says the federal government has acted in the past on situations like the CP Rail strike and says if the government brings in back to work legislation he’ll support it. “I’m not sure what talks the government has had with the railway in the past few days but they’ve know for at least a month this was coming and we’ll have to see what happens this week when it comes to government intervention in this strike.”

Maguire says farmers are only about four weeks away from farmers possibly getting out on their fields and he says they need to know everything is in place so there are ready to go.

“This interrupts cattle feed as well. There’s feed out east and out west and purchasing it is one thing but the railways need to move it” said Larry Maguire.