44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 8, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/8/23 11:08:11 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, right now, as forest fires are raging across the country, from Nova Scotia to Vancouver Island, what are the Liberals doing? They are building pipelines and subsidizing oil and gas.
While the Liberals are patting themselves on the back, right now a fire is burning in my riding, and not just anywhere. It is at Cameron Lake Bluffs, on the doorstop of Cathedral Grove, of the ancient rainforest in my riding. This is in early June.
We need the government to step up and take action on climate change, but also to ensure that there is a separate firefighting agency in Canada to support provinces when there are surges. We also want to ensure that the government has people's back when it comes to mental health supports and climate infrastructure.
Right now, as I said, Highway 4 is cut off. I cannot even get home this weekend. Thirty thousand of my constituents are trapped on the other side of Cameron Lake. Seniors cannot get to their doctor appointments. People cannot get to work. The indigenous communities are greatly impacted.
Will the government have the backs of people in my riding, and across the country, if my province asks for help?
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- Jun/8/23 1:15:30 p.m.
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We are having some type of a technical issue. Is the hon. member's phone or computer close to the mike? Maybe an earpiece is on. Maybe we could turn down the earpieces that are right by there.
It almost sounds like water or something. We are just getting a constant noise.
We will try again.
The hon. member for Vancouver East.
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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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- 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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