I am quite sure they have I have seen references that the number of barges have increased in the last few years. The point of this pipeline is that it will help relive some of the bottlenecks for getting oil from Norther Alberta to market. In addition to barges, trains are also being used, but pipelines are the most efficient (those barges need towboats to keep them in the shipping channel).
http://pipeline.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/oil-barges/
http://www.petroleumhistory.org/OilHistory/pages/barges/bargecanal.html