Evidence of meeting #92 for International Trade in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chains.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Maninder Sidhu Liberal Brampton East, ON
I have about a minute left. I'll turn it over to Transport Canada to speak more in regard to the trade corridors fund.
You mentioned $100 million for the port out in B.C., $100 million for the Edmonton airport and roughly $20 million for the the food grain terminal in Windsor, I think. These are things that will help Canadian businesses get their goods to market.
Maybe you can expand on that a little bit.
Head, National Supply Chain Office, Department of Transport
The Transport Canada role and the supply chain office role as Canadian businesses expand their market is to ensure that they can be reliable trading partners. That depends on a reliable, fluid, efficient and resilient supply chain, and the national trade corridors fund supports exactly that.
It's an 11-year program with $4.6 billion in federal funding that has leveraged $10.4 billion in total investments in projects across the country across all modes of transport to improve the efficiency of the supply chain and the ability of Canadian businesses to trade abroad.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much.
Monsieur Savard-Tremblay, you have six minutes, please.
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for their presentations and their participation today.
My question is for the transport officials.
In January 2022, you held a national supply chain summit. A number of participants identified the need to stimulate public-private funding and investments in critical infrastructure and a need for policy coherence across government, particularly as it looks to exploit new opportunities like advanced batteries, but also in the context of promoting new innovations to decarbonize transportation, such as green shipping corridors. It's worth noting that those public-private partnerships, or P3s, were making headlines 20 years ago.
We know that P3s had some pretty negative consequences in the past. They were popular in Quebec in the 2000s, but a few years later, everyone was uncomfortable with the model. People deeply regretted the decision to take that route. Could you tell me, then, whether any public-private partnerships are under way or being considered?
Head, National Supply Chain Office, Department of Transport
Thank you for the question.
These national supply chains resulted in a task force, which in turn led to a number of recommendations that are being implemented across the Government of Canada. The Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada, in fact, concluded the public comment period just this week, I believe—on the 6th—with public comment from industry on regulations that might be affecting supply chains specifically, as well as border operations. That process will launch. They will be analyzing that input and translating it for analysis and action across the Government of Canada.
Other key recommendations include working on identifying Canada's long-term infrastructure investment needs and different approaches to doing that. Through the federal, provincial and territorial ministers of transport, a process has been launched in collaboration with provinces and territories to begin that exercise.
Additionally, I would note that under the auspices of the national supply chain office, we have launched consultations and engagement with operators, industry and labour in the western corridor. Also, this week we began to identify bottlenecks and areas of opportunity and collaboration in the central and eastern corridor, extending from the Great Lakes through to Atlantic Canada, in order to improve efficiency. As part of improving efficiency, we expect to see improvements to the sustainability of operations.
We are working to identify areas for partnership and collaboration through those processes, across government and through the national supply chain office.
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
That means the P3 model could be expanded to a range of areas. Are there any P3s fully in place right now?
Head, National Supply Chain Office, Department of Transport
In terms of benefits specifically from public-private partnerships, there are any number of partnerships with industry that we have, including through the national trade corridors fund, in order to promote more exchange of data, research and innovation. There are innovation projects under way across government and in collaboration with industry partners all across the country. That includes things like the national trade corridor funds, which themselves are partnerships to develop infrastructure.
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
How do you make sure that, under those partnerships, what happened in Quebec in the 2000s doesn't happen again? I'm talking about projects that resulted in privatized profits, socialized losses and, very often, cost increases.
Head, National Supply Chain Office, Department of Transport
I'm sorry. I'm not entirely sure I understand the situation that is specifically being referenced in Quebec in that way. We—
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
It happened a number of times. The Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal and the Îlot Voyageur are two cases that come to mind. I realize it's not the same, since it was the Quebec government that was involved. There was a time when P3s were popular, but they ended up having tremendous consequences. I just want to be sure that the type of model and agreement you're talking about don't lead us back to a situation where the government incurs the costs and the private sector enjoys the profits.
Head, National Supply Chain Office, Department of Transport
I'm unfamiliar with those specific instances from Quebec.
Many of the partnerships that fundamentally we are seeking to advance are driven by either infrastructure considerations—and we've spoken to those—or are around data. The analyses that determine the priorities for us are the ones that afford a public benefit at the network level to the supply chain system of the country or of a corridor, as opposed to just a private benefit.
There are things we can learn from private operations and innovation that we want to harness to ensure we take those learnings into the system, but a fundamental aspect of a guiding principle or investment is a benefit to the transportation system.
Liberal
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Thank you all for being here. It's quite an interesting crowd. It's certainly a crowd, but it's good to hear from you all.
I'm going to continue with Mr. Dick from the Department of Transport supply chain office.
I think you mentioned some of the challenges faced by Canadian businesses in keeping a good resilient supply chain going. One you mentioned was extreme weather events. We had an atmospheric river event in British Columbia a while ago that literally cut off the coast of British Columbia from the rest of the country. We lost five highways and two train tracks. We were cut off.
I'm wondering how your department is planning for future events like that. What kind of work is the Canadian government doing, and what could it do better, perhaps, to make sure we have a really resilient supply chain, a really resilient transport infrastructure so that we aren't affected in those ways when these things happen again?
Head, National Supply Chain Office, Department of Transport
Thank you for the question.
In fact, Transport Canada was deeply involved in convening supply chain participants throughout the atmospheric river. What we learned from that was that especially when there is a crisis and a public emergency, it is a community in Canada that comes together to do remarkable good and to solve the problems that they are faced with.
Madam Chair, as the member indicated, those problems were many, and they were complex. It involved getting basic food and necessities of life into the Vancouver Lower Mainland and to Vancouver Island. It involved animal welfare and energy and supply. There was rationing of fuel in the Lower Mainland for the first time since the Second World War.
Fundamentally, what contributed to that incident not being worse was the sheer logistical capability of the provincial transportation department to collaborate, as it turns out, with the Trans Mountain pipeline corporation and with the railways to rebuild infrastructure rapidly, and that goes to our resilience, that sheer engineering capacity that was brought to bear.
The other thing was collaboration. We saw tremendous collaboration there. There was a role from government that we have learned from. Part of the supply chain office's mandate is to help convene supply chain participants in times of disruption to figure out collectively how best to mitigate that. It was through the application of everybody's expertise and knowledge that we were able to get the system up and running as quickly as was possible, and in fact, as happened.
What we are aiming to do is systematize that a bit by getting out and engaging with stakeholders across the country through the exercises that I mentioned previously. A part of that will be trying to anticipate and identify risks to our resilience, to our infrastructure and to the flow with specific value chains, and then to collaborate across government and across levels of government to try to work out plans in advance of incidents so that we can mitigate the impacts of disruptions. Disruptions, of course, are inevitable, but better planning can help to increase our resilience.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
At a higher level, what are you hearing from businesses? A lot of them used to have highly efficient just-in-time supply chains. They've been disrupted by pandemics, by weather events and by foreign conflicts. What do you hear from businesses that you work with about that strategy? How are businesses adapting?
Head, National Supply Chain Office, Department of Transport
For businesses worldwide, you've probably heard the shift from just-in-time to just-in-case. That remains a debate that is live globally. It remains to be seen exactly how businesses around the world and certainly in Canada will ultimately land on that, but there are no doubt going to be some adjustments.
In the meantime, what we're hearing from businesses—and it's early stages for our office—through engagement is the desire to make sure that we can be as resilient as possible, that we can recover as quickly as possible from disruptions, which goes to capacity, agility and coordination, and that we have the necessary infrastructure in the long term that has been built to appropriate standards for the evolving climate risk as well.
Businesses want to be reliable. They want resilient, reliable and efficient supply chains, and that is their key message to us.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
You have 40 seconds remaining, Mr. Cannings.
You're okay? Thank you very much.
Mr. Jeneroux, you have five minutes, please.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I hope to get to both Mr. Stacey and Mr. Dick, but I'll start with Mr. Dick.
It seems to be the theme of the meeting here.
Mr. Dick, are you calling us from the new supply chain office in Vancouver? Is that where you are?
Head, National Supply Chain Office, Department of Transport
I am at one of our offices. We are a hybrid workforce with a presence across the country. I live in Quebec.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Is it through Transport Canada? I'm judging by the pictures on the wall.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Do you have an Ottawa office as well? This says that you're in Vancouver, Ottawa and other hubs.
Head, National Supply Chain Office, Department of Transport
Yes. So far, we have staff in Vancouver and Victoria. We have staff in Ottawa and Montreal, and I think next week in Yellowknife.
Conservative