Transport committee  Mr. Chair, through you to the member, that's a perfect question. We talk mostly about our sea ports, but our inland ports are critical. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, in the centre of our country, CentrePort in Manitoba, which is another great example. The simple answer is that we need to invest more.

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, through you to the member, thanks for the question. It's an important one. I'm not sure if today I have specific examples, but I'll follow up with some to the committee. I do want to make a general observation, though. Supply chains don't have political borders. They don't see geography in that sense, so there are....

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, through you to the member, I think for sure, for some within the industry, that and other types of ways and approaches to doing business are sacred cows. If we're going to be a country that is truly resilient, we have to work through that. That's going to take the leadership of individuals who sit on this committee, governments, other business leaders and organizations like Ron's and Dave's and Steve's and mine, to start the conversation so that they're not viewed as sacred cows and they're not scary.

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, through you to the member, I think there are probably a number of things we can do. However, if there are those types of small wins, I think they are going to be restricted to certain segments and sectors. Ron has talked about this, and Dave has talked about this. I think you have to pick some sectors, some parts within the sector, and you'll get smaller wins there.

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, through you to the member, I'm not sure I could give an answer that would be valuable or instructive. What I will say is that the goal of automation can be to replace workforce. The goal of automation can be to elevate the workforce and allow them to do their work. Those are choices that will be made at individual ports and through strategies, so it's best to ask the individual ports.

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, through you to Ms. Koutrakis, I appreciate that I said those things and those are the things that you took down. Nevertheless, yes, I think that red tape has to be looked at. I will say that, when I was speaking about sacred cows there—and here I'm going to look at the industry that I represent—supply chain professionals have grown up doing it a certain way.

Transport committee  Ms. Koutrakis, it's good to see you again. MP Gladu, I think, was asking those questions earlier and suggested some organizations, such as the port authorities. They must be coming in for the next meeting of the committee. I might suggest that they might be in a better position to answer the question, but having said that, let me take it away and come back to the committee if we have some suggestions that might be best for you.

Transport committee  I think it goes back to my earlier comment to one of the members. I said that a national strategy would be great but a North American strategy would be even greater. I don't know whether anyone has the secret sauce yet, but in Europe, at least—because of the European Union—they're able to look at things beyond the individual borders of countries.

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, I'm happy to respond. We hear similar things. Again, the investments that private corporations wish to make need the right environment, and what we hear is that the environment is one.... First of all, these are costly infrastructure investments. This already suggests that private corporations are going to be thoughtful about what they're going to do.

Transport committee  Only if you're going to open up a company and make them.... I say that in jest. I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but there are only so many containers that are made and in the field, so unless we're going to make more, it is a challenge. Dwell time is an issue, and the more we can do to ensure that we empty containers as quickly as possible and get them back into the system....

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, this is an interesting question, and we won't have time for the response. We might take it off-line, if the member wishes. Everybody believes the sharing of data will be the panacea. Certainly, visibility and the sharing of data are important and critical, but sharing data in and of itself is not going to be the answer.

Transport committee  We will provide that to the committee through the clerk.

Transport committee  We're not positioned for growth. We have a limited capacity. We're over that capacity, in some sense, which is why we have the issues we talked about regarding ships at sea. We're not going to speed that up unless we do two things. One will be changing the process of how ports work.

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, through you to the member, I think this is an important question. Let me just give you one statistic to start. I mentioned earlier that recently we did a survey of our members with respect to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One of the questions we asked in that survey was whether or not their companies were discussing cybersecurity and business continuity with their suppliers.

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, through you to the member, thanks for the question. I can't answer the first part of the question. I don't have that knowledge. Let me come to the second, on prioritization. If we look to the earlier conversation of ports, there isn't a prioritization. There generally isn't a prioritization in the transport system.