Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, committee members, for the invitation to appear before you this afternoon.
I will address that question in the second part of my comments. What I would like to discuss during the next 10 minutes is port infrastructure and then supply chain management, because those are inextricably linked in what makes Halifax such a valuable piece of the Canadian supply chain puzzle as we go forward with this excellent development—CETA.
In terms of port infrastructure, many of you will be somewhat familiar with the port of Halifax. For those of you who aren't, let me position us geographically. We are a land bridge. We are the closest point of contact for a major seaport between ourselves and Europe, or in fact the Southeast Asia market transiting through the Suez Canal. Both of those are particularly key markets for Halifax. Right now, 38% of our volume is Canada-Europe trade, so it's a very significant and substantial part of our business.
Over the last decade and a half, this port has been consistently built out to accommodate the ever-increasing size of the larger vessels that are currently seen being deployed on the global trade lanes because they are more efficient. We are in a period of time right now when it's intensely competitive to move cargo globally. In fact, we're seeing an ever-accelerating movement towards shipping lines using bigger vessels to economize and deploy on their trade lanes.
Halifax is the only post-Panamax build-capable east coast port in Canada. Our water depths of 16 metres to 16.2 metres at our four major container berths are unrivalled down the east coast of North America, with the sole exception of Norfolk. We are deeper than other Canadian container ports on the east coast.
We are also one of two right now, aside from one port in New York, that can handle fully laden post-Panamax container vessels at a water depth of about 13.5 metres to 14 metres. You have to have at least a metre and a half for under-keel clearance. Ships don't go very well bouncing along the floor of the ocean.
Now, in terms of our infrastructure, we have two dedicated container terminals each supplied with super post-Panamax cranes. Those are cranes that can reach across—22 container bays wide—the breadth of a vessel. That's the essence of what post-Panamax means, that it's simply too wide to go through the current Panama Canal.
We are seeing a lot of ships of that size being deployed around the world's trade lanes. We built this port out in Halifax specifically to accommodate that type of vessel and to take advantage of the fact that we are on trade lanes and trade routes that are the closest of any major port to Europe in particular. When you're travelling on a great-circle sailing route leaving Europe, you will hit Halifax approximately 36 hours faster than you will by transiting up the St. Lawrence Seaway or by going to the port of New York. And it's 48 hours faster than Norfolk. So when we talk about trade lane connectivity, that's very important to bear in mind in terms of getting your product to market.
One of the other key things about port infrastructure here is the fact that with the four container berths at each of our two terminals cumulatively, and the four miles of on-dock railway network that we have between our two terminals, we can turn vessels quickly. Velocity and reliability are key in terms of your infrastructure. We have built this port out to accommodate these ships to make sure they are not delayed in their global trading patterns, because if you get a reputation for being an unreliable port in terms of vessel congestion, that will affect your marketability. A lot of these shipping lines are operating on very tight sailing schedules. They can't afford to be delayed.
In terms of port structure, as you will see tomorrow during our port tour, we have a lot of port infrastructure that's been built out very recently. We've added two more super post-Panamax cranes to the stable of cranes that are available now in the port of Halifax. We are completing a $110 million capital infrastructure program as we speak.
The amount of $35 million was recently invested at the Halterm container terminal in the south end of the city to provide an extension to the berth as well as a new state-of-the-art plaza for truck-gate handling. As well, $73 million is being invested right now into Richmond Terminals to build that facility out as a modern multi-purpose brake bulk terminal for major projects and the expectation of rehandling some of the cargo around megaprojects in Atlantic Canada.
Let me tie that into supply chain management, because that's really the “so what” factor. I spoke about the integrity of the port in terms of its reputation for velocity and getting people in here on time, productively, with a very skilled trained labour force, so it's reliable, it's productive, it's efficient.
The “so what” factor is what do we actually connect? Currently, the port of Halifax has 16 different shipping lines that connect Canadian trade to European trade. That's more than any other port in Canada right now. We also offer the only roll-on/roll-off container service, so for heavy equipment, trucks, project cargo, or vehicles, for example, carried on the Atlantic Container Line, one of the long-standing members of the port of Halifax's suite of companies, you'll see that this offers us the ability to continue to leverage the trade networks and the trade lanes in support of bilateral trade between Canada and the EU. Those service connections have a reverse flow. It's not just one way. The shipping lines that operate connecting Canada through Halifax into the EU offer both sides of the equation and the opportunity to function in an effective supply chain system.
Augmenting that, of course, is the outstanding CN Rail network in the port of Halifax. I alluded to the fact that we have four miles of on-dock rail between our two terminals. That's a tremendous amount of trackage available to position rail cars to facilitate the flow of containerized goods on and off the terminals. In addition to that, we have multi-purpose break-bulk facilities, which also handle project cargo and extra-dimensional cargo. We're one of the major trading ports, for example, between Canada and Cuba right now. Even though we're talking specifically about CETA today, it goes to the whole concept of supply chain management that Halifax affords as a critical land bridge to facilitate Canada's trade.
That CN rail network I referred to of course gives us unparalleled transit times, so when the container is offloaded here and we track every box in terms of its velocity, how long it takes, the dwell time on the terminal to get from the ship onto the railcar and for the railcar to get inland and headed to its destination, that is an extremely impressive time. We are into the Toronto market consistently within 48 to 72 hours of the container being discharged in the port of Halifax. That is something that again comes to the forefront when we talk about supply chain optics, as well as profitability for shipping lines and the reliability for shippers and users of the port.
So when we talk about the potential for Canada-EU free trade, we're not talking simply about what that impact is for Atlantic Canada. We're talking about the fact that the Port of Halifax facilities can be leveraged to punch right across the country both ways. So in many respects we function as the port of Toronto; we function as an Ontario conduit on the land bridge between Europe and Canada. Our market reach is considerably more robust than what most people would associate with a port based in Atlantic Canada. That's how we're designed. That's how we market the port. That's how we're built out. It's towards these efficiencies of scale by handling as much potential Canadian traffic as possible that we continue to offer the reliability, the service, and the highly trained labour system that we have here in the port.
With that, Mr. Chair, I conclude my preparatory remarks and I welcome questions.