**UNSPLASH/Ed Vázquez**
Canada’s labour minister cited “an alarming lack of urgency” in negotiations between workers and employers at the country’s largest ports.

Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon said he will intervene to end labour disputes at Canada’s two largest ports by imposing binding arbitration on unionized workers and their employers.

MacKinnon, citing the impact on supply chains, the economy and “our reputation as a reliable trading partner,” directed the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order operations at ports in Vancouver, Montreal and Quebec City to resume and to impose binding arbitration, according to a letter on the ministry’s website.

MacKinnon used a similar approach in August to end nationwide rail strikes that threatened to upend Canada’s economy. A year earlier, a three-week strike at ports in British Columbia disrupted about $10 billion in merchandise shipments of everything from fertilizer to cars.

About 1,200 Montreal dock workers represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees were locked out Sunday after they rejected an offer from their employer group, joining dock workers at British Columbia’s ports, including Vancouver, who have been locked out since last Monday as employers push them to approve a new collective agreement.

“We have reached a total impasse in all three disputes,” MacKinnon said Tuesday at a press conference in Ottawa, citing the “alarming lack of urgency” in negotiations. For example, he said the dispute at the Port of Quebec has been “dragging on” for more than two years.

He reiterated his view that negotiated settlements are the best way forward, but said it was his duty to act in the interests of “businesses, workers, farmers, families and all Canadians.”

When pressed by the media on concern that his intervention sets a precedent that could curtail workers’ right to strike or undermine collective bargaining, MacKinnon said he “does not take intervention lightly,” but the parties had allowed their positions to become entrenched.