Industry Committee on May 25th, 2020

[David Montpetit]

Overall, to be fair to the railways, we have good rail infrastructure in the country. Some areas have far more coverage than others, but overall we have a good rail system. It's a matter of dealing with some of the bottlenecks within the rail system and determining where they are, and those bottlenecks are more out of infrastructure than they are from cutbacks at the railway or what they're currently doing. They're just making adjustments to the current business environment.

As I mentioned before, I believe we need a full supply chain review, and I think it became clear after going through what we've gone through that we need a review of all modes in the supply chain—not just railway, but roads, ports, etc. I don't think we've done that yet. We've done it in spits and spats, but we really have not looked at the collective supply chain.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Right.

Expanding on that, then, it has been suggested that Canada is currently facing a container shortage. Is that an accurate assessment, and what are the effects of such a shortage on the supply chain?

[David Montpetit]

We are experiencing a container shortage. For example, coming up in June alone, out of the port of Vancouver, or I should say the west coast, there are nine missed sailings already with container ships. Until the export trade out of China and out of Asia matches what we need and things come back, we're going to continue to face this over the next six months at least, and it's something that doesn't correct itself overnight. For a ship to get to and from any variety of ports in Asia takes months and months.

Fortunately, exports are going fairly well for some of my members, all things considered, but we do need to monitor that. It's an ongoing situation that we have to monitor, but it is a concern, and it will be.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you for that.

My colleagues Tracy Gray and Todd Doherty released a statement urging the government to take action to ensure that truckers had access to things like facilities, food and rest stops.

Are you aware of the federal government taking any steps to address these concerns, and is this still an issue?

[David Montpetit]

We did bring that up with Transport Canada and NRCan early on, probably in the first two days, and in all fairness, it was submitted upward. I'm not sure who dealt with what, but I have to say the shippers are shippers alone. The energy companies did deal with it. They put protocols in place, and I acknowledge that, especially on the retail side and the cardlock side for truckers.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

Our next round of questions goes to MP Longfield. You have five minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses.

I'm going to start with Mr. Paterson and then Mr. Walker to talk about the recovery phase and reopening the plants.

Specifically with Mr. Walker to start, I've been talking with the local Magna plant. I talked with them a few weeks ago. The opening of the truck plants in the States was going to be driving us towards opening in Canada and then working with the provincial labour minister and the Department of Labour to inspect our operations. I heard that the extensive playbook that you have is 140 pages. How is that available for the plants in Canada as well as possibly other manufacturers?

[Donald J. Walker]

I think they already said that General Motors will share theirs. Ours is 64 pages long, and it also covers offices as well as plants. We've had government people in to look at them and approve them, but this is a playbook that's been agreed to among the whole auto industry, so I think it's very thorough, and we're happy to share it.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Okay, that's terrific, because Guelph has a lot of auto parts manufacturing, and we're in the supply chain.

Looking at testing, the premier has been making comments recently about our not hitting testing numbers. I had a conference call earlier this morning with our mayor and with a representative from the manufacturing industry. I was making the suggestion that maybe we could have groups from the automotive parts manufacturers go to the testing clinics to set up slots of times where we could get people into the clinics and back out to their shifts. Is that something you're doing anywhere in the world, or is it something worth considering?

[David Paterson]

I can jump in on that. I know that the Ontario government's been interested in really significantly ramping up the volume of testing. Much of the testing protocols in our plants is to make sure that we respond when we have somebody in the workplace who catches a fever or something like that, and they can go to the nurse's office and get referred to the system. I think the ramp-up of testing that's also being discussed is to increase testing for asymptomatic people and to try to get broader data and the like.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Yes.

[David Paterson]

Drive-through testing is something that is attractive. We've set aside a parking lot in Oshawa that is sitting there available for Health Canada or others in Ontario to set up a drive-through testing capability. We have bottlenecks of times when our shifts change in plants, but we could have a regular opportunity for people to go in voluntarily and do testing. Similarly, we could have all the Durham region going through that area too.

I think there are ways to do it without disrupting the really good protocols that are in place right now.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

That's great, because we have to get beyond temperature testing and just asking questions. As you said, testing asymptomatic people is really the key.

As we look at the second wave—I'll stay with you, David—you're also making ventilators. It hasn't come up in your presentation yet. It looks like we're going to have more ventilators than we need for this wave, but could you comment on the capacity for ventilators for the second wave and opportunities for export?

[David Paterson]

Well, I'm not a ventilator expert, but General Motors was able to help a company called Ventech in Seattle to essentially tear apart their ventilator down to 700 parts and use our international supply chain to resource those parts. Don Walker is making some of them, and so are other Canadian suppliers like Linamar. Those are rolling off the assembly line in Kokomo, Indiana right now. We have another couple of our companies in the auto sector that are making ventilators right here as well.

Really, whether they're face masks or ventilators, it's really got to be Health Canada and the experts who tell us what the demand numbers are and where we need to ramp up. We can manufacture, but we need that guidance.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Yes, and of course Health Canada has to continue to work with the provinces and territories to get the local numbers into the system.

Looking at the scrappage program, I had a Zoom call with our local retailers and also the automotive retail council and the automotive parts manufacturers. Everybody's talking about a double win by getting more cars on the road with lower emissions as well as helping to stimulate the economy. Scrappage programs are generally provincial, so we would have to coordinate with provinces like B.C., which already has a scrappage program. Are you working with provinces as well on this idea?

[David Paterson]

Yes. I had a call with two provinces this morning, so yes, we are looking at what things we can do to coordinate.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Super. Send them our way.

Thanks a lot, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

We are moving on to the next round.

Mr. Savard-Tremblay, you have two and a half minutes.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My question will be for Mr. Paterson of General Motors.

Like my colleague Mr. Lemire, I own a Chevrolet. I don't own the Bolt, but the Volt. Nevertheless, I'm very happy with it. Someday, I'm going to switch to the Bolt.

I believe it was you who mentioned the Canada-U.S.-Mexico agreement earlier. In any event, we were talking about the auto industry and there was some discussion about it. We can see that there are provisions in this agreement regarding original content, which must be North American. In the Bloc Québécois, we fought for aluminum. According to the trend, parts will now be made of aluminum. The auto sector is tending more and more toward self-sufficiency.

Now, I would like to raise the issue of energy. The electrical industry is the future of employment in Quebec. That seems clear. Would you be in favour of legislation to ensure that an increasing number of zero-emission electric vehicles are built?

California, which has the same population as Canada, has such a law in force, as do several states, and Quebec has had one for four years.

[David Paterson]

If I can answer that to start off with, first of all, thank you for driving an electric car from Chevrolet.

We intend to see a huge turnover of our General Motors fleet into electric vehicles, from pickup trucks down through the entire fleet of vehicles we offer. We are building an enormous battery plant in Ohio right now.

I think there are two major changes that are going to take place in the auto sector. One is electrification. The other is autonomous vehicle technology.

I think that change is coming, but one has to be really careful in bringing forward laws that push things so quickly that we end up not having the ability to make the transformation.

We're very comfortable with Quebec's law, but we have to work together to make sure these things are managed in a correct time.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Our next round of questions goes to MP Masse. You have two and a half minutes.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Mr. Walker, I want to acknowledge something. My brother works at one of your facilities here in Windsor. The outreach that was done to prepare the workforce in going back to work was extensive. They were provided PPE and a whole procedure with regard to testing. Some of it was digital and online, while some of it was flexible, so that if you showed up for work in advance and there was a problem, there was already triage for those individuals who weren't comfortable with doing the online stuff.

Can you highlight something with regard to some suppliers underneath you that may not have the same types of support? There may be a need either for some global standards or some assistance, because I know of other factories, the lower-tier suppliers in the auto sector, that just don't have the resources or even the structures in place to be able to do some of the higher standards that you're doing.

I'm not suggesting that they are unsafe and I don't know all the environments, but I know, for example, that friends and family members are being treated differently at different plants.

[Donald J. Walker]

Sure. I think the smart start has been shared across the board in the auto industry, and it has been cascaded by companies like General Motors and Ford down through the supply base, including our supply base as well.

Everybody should basically learn it and implement what they want. There are different opinions based on different geographic regions, but Canada should all be similar. I do think that other industries can use the same playbook if they want.

I think it is absolutely critical that we get people back to work. We can do it safely. Once we're back to work, we cannot shut down again since we're into the contact tracing, but if I was going to make one point on this panel, it's that we need to get industry going again. We need to get the country going again, because we're going to be bankrupt if we don't.

I don't think it's going to be that difficult. It's going to be a bit more expensive, but I think all the work has been done. It's out there now.