OTTAWA, Ontario — Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal will allow work on Canadian National Railway’s intermodal facility in Milton, Ontario, to resume, at least for now.
The Canadian Press reports that Federal Appeal Court Justice George Locke has issued a stay of a lower-court ruling in March that halted work on the Milton Logistics Hub for environmental reasons. The latest ruling says work on the $250 million project can continue while the railroad appeals the earlier decision.
Locke’s ruling said a delay is “detrimental to the public interest.” The final decision on the project will rest on a later decision from the court.
The Milton project was proposed by CN in 2015 and approved — with some 325 environmental conditions attached — by the Canadian government in 2021. But a federal court blocked that approval because the government failed to consider the adverse human impact of diesel exhaust from both trains and trucks using the facility [see “Court blocks CN plans …,” Trains News Wire, March 5, 2024]. CN said at the time that it remained committed to the Milton facility, which would be its fourth intermodal terminal in the Toronto area; the other three are already operating at capacity.
