Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning. My name is Duncan Wilson, and I am vice-president of environment and external affairs with the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. I am joined by my colleague David Miller, senior adviser to the executive.
We are pleased to be here today to discuss issues related to the impact of container traffic on Canadian trade, which is central to the business and success of the port of Vancouver.
The port of Vancouver is Canada's largest port, handling $275 billion worth of cargo annually. A wide range of products and commodities move through our 29 major marine cargo terminals. We are extremely proud of our environmental record, and are focused on achieving our goal for the port of Vancouver to be the world's most sustainable port.
The port currently has four container terminals in operation, and we are optimistic that we will soon get approval to move forward with the construction of a fifth terminal located in the key Roberts Bank area.
Our container business has grown rapidly over the past decade, reaching 3.7 million TEUs in 2021. While we did see a decline of 7% mid-year in 2022, that was largely attributable to COVID-related lockdowns in China and impacts from the extreme weather events in late 2021, which washed out roads and rail networks east of the port for two weeks. This slowed and disrupted traffic for months, well into 2022. That was then followed by terminals in Ontario and Quebec not having space to receive the containers, which stranded containers in the port and on board ships.
Our container business is vital for importers and exporters across the country. The public has learned a good deal about supply chains in the past few years, and now know that a wide range of consumer products, parts, and components for manufacturing travel to Canada by container.
The export business is less well known, but extremely important for Canada. Canadian exporters in many sectors move their products to market in containers. This includes products which traditionally moved in bulk or break bulk, such as forest products, and some agricultural products, such as pulses and specialty crops. In addition, food products such as meat, fish, and shellfish move in refrigerated containers.
As I mentioned, extreme weather challenges impacted container traffic in 2021 and carried over into 2022. Container ships normally move on set routes on predictable schedules. Pre-COVID, it was rare to see container ships at anchor at the port. They arrived on schedule and went directly to a terminal to unload and load. However, COVID and particularly lockdowns in China have disrupted schedules, led to backups, and made schedules less predictable. In Canada, this has meant congestion at container terminals and congestion at rail terminals and warehouses in eastern Canada.
I was just in Asia with other members of our executive, meeting with some of the steamship lines that serve our port. What we heard was consistent with what we have been hearing for some time: They need more capacity and would like to have more options in terminal operators.
This message reinforced the importance of increasing terminal capacity at the port, and that requires getting our new Roberts Bank terminal 2 project approved and built.
We are currently completing an expansion of the Centerm terminal in Burrard Inlet. That expansion, which increases the terminal's capacity by 60% while only increasing the footprint of the terminal by 15%, will be virtually sold out when it opens at the end of this year. This is something that was reinforced in our meetings with shipping lines in this most recent trip.
The new RBT2 container terminal will be located at Roberts Bank, an extremely strategic location for Canada, as it has no air draft or water draft restrictions. The new three-berth terminal will increase capacity at Roberts Bank in a phased manner and bring in a third operator, adding to DP World, which operates two terminals in Vancouver and Prince Rupert. GCT operates the other two terminals in Vancouver. To date, we have signed 21 mutual benefit agreements with first nations that are very supportive of the project.
In addition to added terminal capacity, we continue to move forward on a number of infrastructure projects that will remove bottlenecks and improve rail and truck access to the terminals. We have achieved significant benefit from numerous projects, partially funded under the national trade corridors fund and its predecessor. These included major road and rail projects along the corridor to Roberts Bank built in anticipation of Roberts Bank terminal 2.
We are also working with Transport Canada and our supply chain partners to develop transparency and reporting tools and processes that will help everyone in identifying problems and solutions.
In conclusion, I would emphasize that we are confident that container traffic through the port of Vancouver will continue to grow in the coming years and decades. We believe Canada's container sector, which includes the ports, the terminals, the trucking sector and the railways, has done a good job dealing with the disruptions and other challenges related to both the pandemic and the weather-related disruptions.
We are also proud of our record in ensuring that growth has not had, and will not have, a negative impact on the environment.
We appreciate the opportunity to appear today and we look forward to your questions.