44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 8, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/8/23 8:57:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would say there is still a bit of work to be done, especially on small ports. That was pointed out earlier. I think the committee will also have some issues to address, such as how hard it is for us to get certain railcars in Quebec.
If the goal is to make our supply chains more fluid, we cannot do so just for the oil and gas sector. We also have to do it for other economic sectors. Difficulty getting railcars seems common among forestry stakeholders.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to refer back to something that my colleague mentioned in his speech about the position of Canadian railroads and the ability of our ports in relation to all of the other ports in the world. He said we are number 368 out of 370, I believe are the numbers that he used. He can correct me if that is not correct.
We have the ability to repair lines and that sort of thing, as we saw from the November disaster that took place in the Rocky Mountains that basically isolated the west coast with regard to railroad travel. It was fixed within a week or two.
Can the member elaborate a little more on what he thinks are some of the solutions to problems that could have been put into Bill C-33 that might have been used to get us back at least a bit closer to the top rather than being right at the bottom of all the ports in the world?
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- Jun/8/23 10:16:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as I have referenced, there are 13 immediate recommendations and eight more longer-term actions of the supply chain task force that have so far been ignored. We heard about the borrowing capacity of ports as the transport committee toured all of our major ports throughout the middle of March. There are those two things, as well as a host of other things, and we could learn from the examples of places like Rotterdam, Antwerp and Seattle that do much better jobs than we do here.
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Mr. Speaker, this evening we are talking about Bill C-33, an act strengthening our ports and improving rail safety.
One of the stated objectives of this bill is to improve supply chain disruptions, which are causing inflation.
It looks like a very substantial bill, more than 100 pages long, and amends six or seven acts of this Parliament, but when we read through it we notice that it does not say very much at all. In fact, it does not do much at all in effectively tackling the many challenges that our ports and transportation infrastructures face today.
I want to focus on the Port of Vancouver. My colleague has pointed out that its rating is not very good compared to other ports. It ranks roughly 380, or something like that, compared to the Port of Rotterdam, the land of his ancestry and mine as well, which is one of the most efficiently run ports, so it can be done.
The Port of Vancouver is a very crowded piece of real estate, which is one of the reasons given why it is maybe not as efficient as some other ports. Of course, the Netherlands does not have a lot of land either, but it has still managed to use what it has very efficiently and effectively.
Unfortunately, this legislation before us today does not really tackle the underlying basic problems regarding supply chain resiliency and efficiency.
Every day my riding of Langley, which is very close to the Port of Vancouver, just a 45-minute drive, experiences the presence of the Port of Vancouver with so many trains coming through. It is the main line of the CP, and the CN runs through it as well. There are trains coming in with empty container cars, and trains with full containers heading out to the rest of Canada and down into the United States.
CN and CP have been good, responsible corporate citizens. They have partnered with the Port of Vancouver in the last decade or so to build some overpasses so that traffic can keep flowing more or less smoothly. I say more or less, because it is not perfect. There is always room for improvement. If anybody from CP, CN or the port authority is listening right now to this speech at this hour of the night, they will know what I am talking about. Although we are very grateful for the overpasses, they would have been better placed at 200 Street, at the Fraser Highway crossing, close to the Langley bypass, to 216 Street, close to the new interchange with the freeway, so there is still work to be done. There needs to be improvement.
That brings me to another local issue. Roberts Bank is going to be expanded. To give a bit of background, the Port of Vancouver is the largest port in Canada by volume shipped. As a matter of fact, it is as big as all the Canadian ports put together, and we are going to expand it.
When I say it is the biggest, it is the amalgamation of three ports some years ago, the Port of Vancouver, the Fraser port, which has ports on the New Westminster side and the Surrey side, and also Roberts Bank, which is in the city of Delta. Roberts Bank is now going to be expanded. The port itself is an artificial island that was built in the Strait of Georgia, which we nowadays call the Salish Sea. It is a big island. There is a causeway that goes up to it with a highway on it and a couple of railroads. It is going to be expanded, I am not sure by how much, but it is a very significant infrastructure project.
That brings me back to Langley. With all these trains coming through, the traffic is going to increase, so if somebody from CP, CN or the Port of Vancouver is listening, we are going to be looking for some more overpasses just to make sure Langley keeps on functioning while the port expands.
We are talking about Bill C-33, which comes on the heels of the Final Report of The National Supply Chain Task Force 2022, commissioned by the Minister of Transport.
I will read a quote from it, which states:
A recurring theme in the report is the struggle of both government and industry to cope with uncertainties arising due to critical factors such as rapidly changing trade patterns, human- and climate-caused disruptions, shifting geopolitical risk, and increased consolidation in major transportation modes. As a medium-sized player in the global market, Canada is finding it difficult to overcome these challenges....
That is the introduction to the report. The authors of the report dig deeper, and my friend has already raised some of the immediate actions that were called for, but I am going to take a look at some of the longer-term ones.
Recommendation 11 is to establish a supply chain office because the authors know that supply chain disruptions are one of the biggest problems we are facing. Unfortunately, the bill would not do much about that.
I was at a round table with stakeholders talking about this report, and they were are all operators: marine operators, train operators from CP, etc. The port authority was there too, of course. One of the main concerns was bureaucracy upon bureaucracy upon more bureaucracy. They are looking for efficiencies. These people know how to do their business. They are asking government to please deregulate to allow private enterprise to make things more efficient.
There were a couple of other things they mentioned, and I think this is really important to understand as well. They said to immediately address the significant transportation supply chain labour shortages in Canada. Now, when I talked to employers, and not just those in transportation, any employer, they tell me that one of the biggest challenges is that there are not enough people.
I attended a meeting of the Western Canadian Shippers’ Coalition and its representatives told me that there are not enough people, not enough trains, not enough truck drivers, not enough people working on trains, not enough people repairing tracks and not enough people repairing trains. These are the fundamental issues that our transportation system and our ports are facing today. Unfortunately, this report does not get into that sufficiently.
A couple of weeks ago, I went with the transportation committee, and I am not on that committee, but I tagged along with its members to the port of Prince Rupert. It is the third-biggest port in Canada after Vancouver and Montreal. It will soon become the second biggest port because it has huge expansion plans, and I applaud that. I think that is a fantastic idea. It is actually closer to the major Asian ports and hours by rail to Chicago. It is as quick to get to Chicago from the port of Prince Rupert as it is from Vancouver. I really applaud the expansion of that port. It has room and can build much more efficiently.
To sum up, there are a lot of problems today in our transportation system and in our ports, and Bill C-33 would not do enough. I think the bill needs a major rethink. We will be voting against it. Of course, we are in favour of all the things that the minister said the bill was going to do, but we are saying that the bill would not do them. Bill C-33 needs a major rethink, and it needs to go back to the drawing board. The people who drafted this legislation need to understand what the real issues are.
I have an amendment to present, which is being seconded by my colleague from Flamborough—Glanbrook. I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “the House declines to give second reading to Bill C-33, An Act to amend the Customs Act, the Railway Safety Act, the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992, the Marine Transportation Security Act, the Canada Transportation Act and the Canada Marine Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act, since the bill fails to improve supply chain efficiencies, address rail service reliability, improve labour relations, and weakens the ports’ ability to fulfill their mandate with an Ottawa knows best approach.
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Mr. Speaker, I know a bit about that, as I was part of the executive team that transferred our last national airport system in Canada, the Prince George Airport. We went from a Transport Canada federally operated airport to a local airport authority, the Prince George Airport Authority.
The challenge with that is that once it stands alone, it is standing alone. There are very few opportunities for revenue generation. Who creates the safety and security policies for our ports and airports? It is the government, and it transfers very few dollars to these ports and airports to maintain them, whether it is regarding their safety or security.
That is, again, why I am frustrated with Bill C-33. We always want our goods and people to be transported via safe, secure and sound modes. However, what we have seen is that the government views our ports and airports as cash cows, not as the economic engine generators they truly are. There are so many things we could do.
We are the highest-cost jurisdiction in the world for aviation fees, which is why Canadians pay some of the highest costs for airline tickets. It is why cargo aircraft or passenger carriers that come in have to pay some of the highest costs just to land here and transport goods. If we made things a little easier for people to come to Canada to conduct business, imagine how great we could be. That is the Canada I want to live in.
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- Jun/8/23 11:02:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is an issue with the bill about creating a bunch of new advisory bodies and a bunch of new committees. Going back to other bills the government has implemented where new committees and new advisory panels have been struck, quite often we see a stacking of the deck, with a bunch of Liberal insiders on the panels. At the end of the day, it is delaying things and causing issues in trying to get projects completed and built.
I know that people in Saskatchewan desperately need a port modernization strategy so we can get our products out of the Prairies. We are landlocked. We need the ports. These advisory panels generally do not do any good in helping the people in our situation. I am wondering if my colleague has any thoughts about that.
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- Jun/8/23 11:30:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let us go over some of those detriments inside this bill and try not to go into too many on ports, but there are quite a few issues with the ports that will be affected. There are additional ministerial powers that will limit local decision-making. That is not a good idea.
Additional regulatory requirements will add cost to stakeholders, which, again, will be passed on, like I said, to Canadian consumers.
It is also going to reduce anchorages adversely. Some stakeholders will be impacted. There are a lot of issues here with local decision-making being taken away and handed to the executive. I generally believe that is a bad idea, and it is reflected in many stakeholders expressing that publicly and declining to support the bill.
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- Jun/8/23 11:46:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in short, unfortunately the answer is no.
My private member's bill, which deals with interoperability, could actually help deal with some of the issues in the rail line system. It is going to help pave the way to be able to do that, so we have some commonality there.
When it comes to the trade agreements, my colleague from Abbotsford was somebody who negotiated a lot of those and got deals signed. Unfortunately, due to delays, maybe from some of the other countries and whatnot, the Conservatives did not get them fully implemented. Yes, the government finished some of those off, but it made some changes to them that we do not necessarily agree with.
The big point about the Port of Vancouver in particular is that it is the third-worst port in the world. Prince Rupert is the ninth-worst port. These are ports that could have huge potential. They could be in the top 50 ports in the world with no problem. They could be, and they should be. The potential is there for them to be able to do that. I do not see anything in the 108 or 109 pages of this bill that would actually make sure that those ports go from being at the bottom of the pile to the top of the pile.
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- Jun/8/23 11:47:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague mentioned the ports that are close to our export markets. There are five ports in Canada, namely Prince Rupert, Vancouver, Saint John, Halifax and Montreal, that are licensed to take containers in.
Recently, a number of us in Ontario toured a port in Picton where the owners have applied to be licensed to receive containers because it is closest to the city of Toronto, which is the largest market for our incoming containers. The owners have asked for no federal money. All they need is a licence. They are willing to pay for any CBSA costs required to clear containers, yet they are unable to achieve a licence.
Bringing containers in closer to the city before moving from ship to rail reduces emissions and reduces transportation costs. Would my colleague not agree that this would be a logical, environmentally sound reason to offer a sixth port closest to our biggest market for incoming containers?
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