The federal government tabled legislation Monday ordering 1,700 striking locomotive engineers at Canada's biggest railway back to work.

The engineers at Canadian National Railway have been on strike since Saturday morning.

Canadian National Railway locomotive engineers began a strike Saturday, but legislation ordering them back to work was tabled on Monday. (CBC)

The government said a strike would threaten the country's fragile economic recovery, observing that the ports of Halifax and Prince Rupert, B.C., rely entirely on CN to transport goods. CN handles half of the rail shipments that come through Vancouver and 30 per cent of those through Montreal.

The bill would not be passed until Wednesday at the earliest because tomorrow is the NDP's opposition day, when it can introduce its bills.

The Canadian Wheat Board said it welcomed any measure to get grain moving. The strike has created slowdowns that are "extremely serious" for western farmers, according to the board's media relations manager, John Lyons.

Lyons said late shipping penalties as vessels overstay their time in port will begin to add up quickly if the strike lasts several weeks.

"We could reach the point where we're looking at costs and shipping penalties of a million dollars a day," he said.

Company wants arbitration on all issues

The legislation would order an end to the strike immediately and send all the issues to binding arbitration.

The Teamsters union, which represents the engineers, wanted to send wage-increase issues to binding arbitration upon a negotiated resolution of other issues, including the maximum distance engineers can travel in one month. But the company said the two sides have been unable to resolve those other issues in 14 months of talks.

CN wanted everything to go to arbitration. It offered a 1.5 per cent wage increase and wanted to increase the travel distance maximum by 800 kilometres to 6,900 kilometres. The union said the higher maximum would make some of its members redundant and lead to layoffs.

The company used managers to keep trains running over the weekend.

Ottawa ordered conductors at CN back to work in April 2007 after a two-month labour dispute. Arbitration, which followed, favoured the company's offer.

With files from The Canadian Press