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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Posthaste: $850M worth of manufactured goods sit idle every day as rail stoppages continue Back to video

It was a busy long weekend for government officials, Indigenous groups and harried business executives, many of whom had to be away from home on Family Day across Canada as they scrambled in the aftermath of the blockade that appears to have frozen the country’s economy. But there appears to be no end in sight.

Doug Porter, BMO Capital Markets senior economist, says while the global economy is reeling from the coronavirus — which will likely dent China’s growth —, the Canadian economy also has the added pressure of dealing with a widespread rail shutdown.

“The ultimate cost will depend on the duration of the shutdown, and we have plenty of recent evidence to make an early assessment,” Porter said in a note over the weekend. “The November CN strike, which lasted more than a week, ended up carving less than 0.1 ppts from GDP that month. However, this shutdown threatens to be more open-ended, with the situation ‘fluid’.”