Bayside Canadian Railway
Coordinates: 45°09′31″N 67°08′23″W / 45.15869°N 67.13971°W / 45.15869; -67.13971
The Bayside Canadian Railway is an extremely short railway in Bayside, New Brunswick, Canada. Its apparent sole purpose is to perform as a Canadian railway, to take advantage of a loophole in the Jones Act that would normally forbid the use of foreign-flagged vessels in shipping between two U.S. ports.[1][2]
Shipping companies Kloosterboer International and Alaska Reefer Management (both part of American Seafoods Group) ship frozen pollock from Dutch Harbor (Alaska), via the Panama Canal to the Eastern United States.[1] The Jones Act requires the use of U.S.-flagged vessels when shipping between two U.S. ports, but there is an exemption,[3] the so-called third proviso,[4] when part of the route is over Canadian rail lines. American Seafoods has been using foreign-flagged shipping "for years",[2] and, until 2012, they used a 30-mile long route of shipping by the New Brunswick Southern Railway.[2] However, in 2012, this practice had changed such that the fish was transferred to trucks in Bayside, the truck driving up a loading ramp onto one of two flatbed railcars. Then a tiny shunter locomotive pulled the cars to the other end of the railroad track, reversed and pushed the train back to the loading ramp, after which the truck would drive off the ramp and then enter the US via Calais, Maine.[2]
On August 16, 2021, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) gave American Seafoods notice of $350 million in penalties for alleged violations of the Jones Act.[5] CBP claimed that the Bayside Canadian Railway is not a "through route" and that the proviso in the Jones Act therefore does not apply.[1]
