Good morning, Madam Chair and honourable members of Parliament.
On behalf of Western Canadian Shippers’ Coalition, I would like to thank you for the invitation to participate in this session. My name is David Montpetit, and I am the president and CEO.
WCSC is a cross-commodity organization focused on the safe, efficient and competitive movement of goods while optimizing the transportation sector, which will ultimately benefit the Canadian economy. Our organization represents companies based in western Canada that collectively ship billions of dollars' worth of product annually to domestic and international customers and provide tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs across Canada, including in many small communities where they are key employers.
Let me start by thanking the government for its efforts to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Canadians. This includes both bureaucratic and ministerial personnel at Natural Resources Canada and Transport Canada for being available and responsive to WCSC members through regular conference call meetings, and other MPs with the sitting government and the official opposition who have made themselves available to discuss our concerns. I also extend my appreciation to all shippers and supply chain partners for continuing to do their utmost to safely operate and deliver goods and services during this stressful, unpredictable period.
COVID-19 is only one of the challenges impacting Canada’s supply chain. There has been pressure on our national trade corridors for several years, which is why WCSC participated in the Canada Transportation Act review initiated by Transport Canada in 2014, provided recommendations in response to Bill C-49 and continues to represent members on follow-up initiatives related to the Transportation Modernization Act.
COVID-19 struck at a time when shippers were still recovering from recent disruptions to the supply chain, including: first, service issues resulting from the CN rail strike in November 2019 and the usual winter weather conditions; second, a slow order issued by Transport Canada in response to the February 6 train derailment in Saskatchewan; and, third, illegal blockades on rail lines across Canada that also began on February 6 and continued through March.
The impacts of the measures taken by industries and government in response to COVID-19 include scheduling issues, shipping delays and container shortages; increased transportation costs for trucking and vessels; labour capacity issues such as a workforce that is diminished or stretched to meet decreasing and increasing demand; a drop in imports and exports to Asia and Europe; and reduced demand for products, for example in the energy sector.
The rail blockades and the COVID-19 pandemic have not only demonstrated the importance of Canada's supply chain to average Canadians for basic necessities, they have also exposed its vulnerability.
As Canada emerges from the pressures of COVID-19, our key concern is the recovery plan, the ability of the supply chain to have adequate resources in place to ramp back up when businesses start to return to more normal operations. WCSC members will continue to collaborate with Transport Canada and NRCan regarding to this.
We have some recommendations, the first of which is that a comprehensive review is necessary to determine precisely what Canada’s major trade corridors will require in terms of maximizing the performance of our roads, rails and ports. This includes determining current and future capacity, first and last mile efficiencies, and bottlenecks in congested areas such as the Vancouver Lower Mainland and northern Alberta.
Second, we need a more robust data collection and analysis. The rail transportation system must become more transparent. In Bill C-49, government put in place transitional performance and service metrics reporting. Those metrics lack relevant context, in particular in relation to railway capacity. That has made the transitional provisions largely ineffective in promoting transparency and accountability.
Data that is aggregated and averaged over an entire country does not give a forest products mill in northern Alberta nor a mine in B.C. any actionable information. Shippers have taken a much more assertive role in developing their own internal, regional-specific railway performance metrics and require a benchmark from government to measure against.
We are extremely concerned about the damage to customer confidence in the reliability of Canada as a supplier of goods and resources resulting from the ongoing challenges in the supply chain. We will continue to work with government and other shipper organizations to seek solutions related to COVID-19, including, as I mentioned, the strategic recovery plan, a comprehensive supply chain review, and more robust data and metrics.
Thanks so much.