Agriculture Committee on March 24th, 2022

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Hemmes, maybe I'll start with you. In your position as the president of Quorum Corporation, you obviously have an incredible view of our grain handling system.

My riding is on Vancouver Island, and many of the anchorages for the port of Vancouver are located in and among the Gulf Islands. Residents in my riding can obviously see that many of them are anchored there for six to eight weeks at a time, and many of those anchorages are being used. They are noticing that far more are being used than even a decade ago.

With respect to the bulk carriers and trying to find efficiencies in their arrival time, is there anything that you can recommend the Government of Canada do to facilitate more efficiency in terms of port operations, how freighters are arriving, and lining them up with the correct cargo, etc.?

[Mark Hemmes]

That's a tough one to answer. It's a good question, but I don't think you can schedule the arrival of vessels much better than what they do today. In order to have a bulk freighter come into a port, you have to book that freighter anywhere between six and 12 weeks ahead of time.

You do all your logistical planning with the idea that you're not going to keep that vessel there any longer than you absolutely have to, but if the product doesn't arrive at the port to be loaded into the vessel, there's very little anyone can do about that. You're planning three, four and five weeks ahead of time, and when the railways don't provide you with the car capacity to move that product to the port to put it in position to load into a vessel, there's not a lot the port or the terminal operators can do, other than let it wait.

I have to emphasize the fact that there is no shipper or anybody who's contracting a vessel who has any desire to have a vessel sit there for as long as six or eight weeks, because they're paying vessel demurrage on that. Right now, for this year alone, we estimate that the vessel demurrage in Vancouver is exceeding about $35 million, which is a huge number. None of these people want to pay that money, but they're left with no choice.

Bill Campbell pointed out earlier in this session that this is money that ends up coming out of the producer's pocket eventually.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Sands, I'd like to turn to you. Your members, of course, have a lot of daily interactions with the trucking industry, and we certainly have seen, especially in the last year, that there was a significant increase in vacant positions.

In your members' conversations with truckers, is there anything you can relate to the committee about the kinds of working conditions they're operating under? Have they provided any feedback about what their industry needs? Is there some kind of national training strategy?

How could the federal government be most effective in trying to encourage more people to get involved in the trucking industry so that sectors like yours are not having to pay the consequences?

[Gary Sands]

It's a very good question. I don't feel qualified enough to really comment on that in detail, only to tell you that, yes, we've heard from our members. They have had conversations with truckers and, as you can imagine, there have been a lot more conversations due to the increasing costs.

The two issues that come up a lot are the very high costs of insurance and also training programs. That comes up a lot anecdotally in my conversations with our members.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Yes, I've heard the same with the class 1 licences. It's a significant investment for people.

Dr. Mussell, on this same question, is there anything you would like to relate with regard to the trucking industry?

[Dr. Al Mussell]

I'm going to say that it's a bit out of my wheelhouse to deal with in detail, but I think you bring up a good point having to do with working conditions. I believe it's the Bureau of Labour Statistics in the U.S. that has done studies in which it's found, in the truckload segment of the trucking industry, enormously high turnover rates and poor working conditions. Surely that has an impact.

Perhaps it speaks to a bigger issue having to do with human resources, in which we look in agriculture and food at how we compete for talent, rather than how we try to reduce labour costs. I think the latter is an old way of looking at it, and attracting talent is really where we need to be today.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you, Mr. MacGregor.

To all our witnesses, that is all the time we have today, unfortunately, but we really enjoyed your testimony. Thank you for your respective leadership in your commodity groups, and thank you for being here today.

For colleagues who are on the line, you have in your email a link to be able to get to the in camera session for our last 15 minutes. Please go as quickly as possible and join, so that we can get helpful feedback to our analysts.

Thank you so much, everyone.

[Proceedings continue in camera]