Evidence of meeting #109 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was border.
Chief Administrative Officer, City of Port Colborne
Through the chair, I believe we do, through payments in lieu of taxation. It's basically a federal transfer in lieu of tax.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Okay, fair enough.
Mr. Menon, is the focus of your activities mainly on trade with the United States?
Coordinator, Foreign Trade Zone, Niagara Region
No, but it includes the United States. It means that I enable local companies to develop their exports internationally.
We have 160 countries where we have our trade commissioner services. What is vital for Niagara is that if there are specific inbound missions that are happening, I reach out to the agencies and enable our companies to have that B2B contact so they can leverage into foreign markets beyond the United States.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
To what degree do you have facilities available locally to load and offload from ships?
Coordinator, Foreign Trade Zone, Niagara Region
That's a good question, on which I'll have to get back to you. I don't have an answer to that now.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Okay, fair enough.
It's been mentioned a few times, and Vance has mentioned it as well, the new roadway that's being called for.
Has the region done a kind of origin and destination study for truck movements?
Coordinator, Foreign Trade Zone, Niagara Region
This I will also have to get back to you on.
The director of economic development told me to pass on this message. I'll get back to you with the answer on that.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Obviously, it's something that's very useful. As areas grow, you quite often get a disconnect, say, between an intermodal port and warehousing, that sort of thing. When you talk about building a new road, obviously the new road would be filled with trucks and maybe commuter traffic.
Looking at the fundamental efficiencies between one mode and the other, I wonder if you've thought more about a rail link as opposed to a highway link.
Coordinator, Foreign Trade Zone, Niagara Region
That's a good point. The rail link is equally important.
Now it's more focusing into the United States, and that's the reason the transportation.... I would refer to specific statistics. One in six trucks that cross between Canada and the U.S. passes through Niagara. That means one million trucks each year. Any condition on that definitely impacts our exporters. That is number one. I did hear about one of the sessions that did mention that. This condition also impacts on the duty that has been collected at times. When it's inbound that happens and there is a duty factor, if you have smooth traffic in place, you'll have a better collection of tax, and that assures economic prosperity.
Number two, we are talking about a $5.7 trillion U.S. market that we are addressing for any of our foreign direct investors. This is another pitch where we are talking about 130 billion people.
Liberal
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
My thanks to the witnesses for joining us today.
Here is my first question.
The local phrase to describe Port Colborne is
“where business and lifestyle are a perfect match”.
Given its location, I imagine that the town developed around Lake Erie, and continues to do so.
Can you tell us about the economic impact that the proximity to Lake Erie represents?
Chief Administrative Officer, City of Port Colborne
Sure. We have a good mix of lakefront residential and canal waterfront commercial and industrial features. We have waterfront on both sides of the municipality, through the middle via the canal, and around Lake Ontario, and because of that, we've seen a huge increase in residential housing demand, particularly for lakefront, but even for some of the cottage and seasonal residential that takes place there.
What we see in the downtown core is a commercial walkable community, a boutique-style downtown area where some of the retail focuses on the waterfront aspect. There are definitely a lot of nautical themes in our municipality, going all the way back to our city hall, where we have nautical themes in our council chambers and in the way we've decorated city hall.
I think the natural features have been incorporated into the municipality. We also have one of the largest municipal marinas in all of Ontario, which once again was built through a federal and municipal partnership. The federal government owned those lands and divested them over 30 years ago to the city to use. We have this thriving marina that attracts people from all over southern Ontario and transient boaters from the United States and so on.
Definitely, the economic development impact of the canal and the lake have created this perfect storm of creating the community for both residential and commercial use.
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
What is the current situation in your port in terms of traditional infrastructure, but also of smart infrastructure?
Chief Administrative Officer, City of Port Colborne
We do have an infrastructure deficit, like most municipalities in Ontario and, I would suggest, in Canada. We try to keep our roads and bridges safe for our community. We've been trying to replace municipal facilities on a go-forward basis. We have a nice operations centre, a library, and a museum. They're all very much up to date.
Our infrastructure is most dilapidated in our downtown core. We have a situation.... We have a downtown revitalization project on the books, and everything underground, including water, waste water and storm sewers, as well as the roads, sidewalks and streetscaping will be designed. It's about a $32-million job that is going to be an economic boon for our downtown area.
Really, it meets the triple bottom line initiatives of greening the downtown with those underground services, economic gain for our entire business district, which is important to the municipality, and while the design is not completely done yet, there is a plan to have some smart infrastructure built into that new construction so that we can improve connectivity and innovation in the downtown core for the municipality and for tourists and businesses and so on.
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
What plans do you have for your port in terms of smart infrastructure? What would smart infrastructure look like for you?
Chief Administrative Officer, City of Port Colborne
For us, I think the most important thing would be movement of people and goods. I would like to see us have connectivity. I think the new normal is a connected downtown where people can get information through the Internet of things, basically, and where their cars are connected and so on.
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
I have a quick question before my time runs out.
Do you use any automated vehicles in your port to make the activities easier?
Chief Administrative Officer, City of Port Colborne
I'm sorry. At the city for the municipal needs...?
Liberal
Chief Administrative Officer, City of Port Colborne
The city doesn't operate the port. We're called Port Colborne, but the shipping canal, the Welland Canal, is the actual waterway. There are businesses, wharves and docks that are part of the seaway infrastructure, but that's all administered by the seaway management corporation.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
I just want to allow both witnesses to elaborate a bit more, if I may, Madam Chair.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
I would ask you to elaborate a bit more on the asset itself.
When we look at Niagara as an entity, as a whole, as well as Port Colborne, Welland, Thorold and, of course, St. Catharines, along the canal corridor from lake to lake, we're really trying to ensure that, when the minister recognizes trade corridors, it can participate within the bigger picture nationally, to then allow us to perform a lot better when it comes to the global market. How then can you actually be part of that? How do you help facilitate that discussion? How do you communicate, for example, to the minister why the investments should be made and then therefore be part of the bigger picture as it relates to trade corridors?
