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.
September 24th, 2018 / 6:05 p.m.
Gary Long Chief Administrative Officer, City of Welland
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good evening, committee members.
My name is Gary Long. I'm the chief administrative officer for the City of Welland.
6:05 p.m.
Stan Korosec As an Individual
Good evening, everyone.
I'm Stan Korosec. I am the director of Canadian government relations for the Ambassador Bridge.
6:05 p.m.
Llewellyn Holloway Board Director, Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority
Hi. I'm Lew Holloway. I was the general manager of the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission up until a year ago. I am now a board director on the Peace Bridge.
6:05 p.m.
Director, Market Development, St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation
Good evening. I'm Bruce Hodgson, director of market development for the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation, based here in St. Catharines.
6:05 p.m.
Vice-President, External Relations, St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation
Good evening. I'm Jean Aubry-Morin. I'm the vice-president of external relations for the Canadian seaway.
6:05 p.m.
President, Chamber of Marine Commerce
Good evening. I'm Bruce Burrows, president of the Chamber of Marine Commerce.
6:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
The idea is that it's your microphone, whoever wants to open it up with free-flowing information on points that, as Ron said, you want to reiterate to make sure we got it straight, or any additional comments.
Who wants to go first?
Mr. Korosec, go ahead.
6:05 p.m.
As an Individual
Thank you, Madam Chair.
An earlier question was put, I think, to Ron, about customs staffing in plazas. For our new span, the only thing we have to do is build the bridge. The new six-lane bridge will tie into the existing customs plaza. We are going to do some modifications to the Canadian CBSA commercial plaza.
Right now, a truck that has to get inspected has to be escorted four kilometres down the road to what they call an off-site facility, which obviously is a security issue. CBSA has asked for quite some time that we bring that back to the plaza, which we're going to do. That's one of the phases of the project.
There won't be any additional CBSA staffing required because the bridge just ties into the existing plaza. I was at the Blue Water Bridge for 10 years. We did the same thing when they twinned the bridge there. It tied into the existing customs plaza. That's why our project only costs $500 million to do, because it's just the bridge and the plaza.
Ron touched on a couple of things. I think there's something you should note about traffic volumes across the borders. We all belong to the Bridge and Tunnel Operators Association. There's a website, and all the stats are on there. We all contribute statistics to it. They're updated every month.
Just to let you know, in the period from the year 2000 to 2017, at our bridge, car traffic is down by 50%, and in the same time period, truck traffic is down by 27%. Ron alluded to some of the reasons for that with the shift in manufacturing. At the Ambassador Bridge, of course, we're heavily into the automotive sector. It's a big user of our bridge, whether it's a finished product or tier one, tier two, or tier three suppliers. That's pretty significant, and I think year-to-date, we're pretty well flat. For all the crossings, the bridge and tunnel operators of the Ontario-Michigan, Ontario-New York crossings, from 2000 to 2017, cars are down by 38% and trucks are down by 20%, so total traffic is down by about 35%.
Why is car traffic down? It's a combination of a few things. The western hemisphere travel initiative that the U.S. initiated in 2009 required you to have a passport or NEXUS. That cut out a lot of the spontaneous trips across the border, where somebody just wanted to go over for one concert or for dinner. If somebody travelling from the southern U.S. was in the Detroit area and thought, “Hey, let's go to Canada,” they likely didn't have a passport.
Interestingly enough, Canadians make up about 75% of the cross-border traffic in cars, so that affected a lot of the cross-border shopping. I know this because I have a wife and two daughters, and I live on the border. That was a big deal in the nineties, when we didn't have Target or Lowe's in Canada. Now we have all of those in Canada. The reason for going to the States was that you'd have that variety, and there were cheaper prices in the United States, too.
Of course, that fluctuates a lot with the Canadian dollar—whether it's down. I used to say if I go to Windsor and ask somebody what the exchange rate is, they'd probably tell me. If you go to Detroit and ask them, they'd say, “The exchange rate of what?” Canadians really keep an eye on that and they're very conversant in that.
At the Peace Bridge, in that time period, cars are down by 39% and trucks are down by 19%. At Queenston-Lewiston, cars are down by 27% and the trucks are down by 22%. Those are just some interesting trends.
Ron mentioned that it's not the lanes across the water that matter. That's really true. Mr. Comerford from CBSA said they have 13 lanes for trucks at the Ambassador Bridge coming into Canada. I'll tell you, when all those 13 lanes are open at the right time, I can go to sleep because the traffic is flowing well. If you shut down one lane, that's about 50 trucks per hour, which is just over a mile of trucks, that back up onto the highway.
These days, the backups that we do see—as other operators can tell you—are not so much because of volumes. There's not enough staffing. Computers go down. It's like when everybody's relying on going to the grocery store and a computer goes down. The little clerk there doesn't know how to count change because it's all done for them. They have to go into manual mode, which really slows things down a lot. Those things are causing us some concern.
In the Canadian government and the U.S. government, we've talked about the importance of trade for both countries. Talk the talk but walk the walk. Fund the CBSA whether it's for staffing or technology. Mr. Comerford talked about some of the new technologies we're testing at the Ambassador Bridge where trucks come into Canada.
He won't say these numbers, but I'll tell you. It takes about 60 seconds for a fast truck to clear primary inspection lines. This new secure corridor—and I've seen it in its early stages—takes about 23 seconds. You can get three trucks where just one could go before. It makes a huge difference. Plus it saves them on their staffing too. They save on their resources side by employing the technology and the trusted trader programs.
We work with all the border operators. We work with CBSA and CBP because we see things going both ways. We sit on a couple of task forces with each organization on how we can make things better at the border. We don't complain. Ron does his rants every once in a while, but we work with him on finding ways to shave a few seconds off each inspection. When you're doing 12,000 trucks and maybe 12,000 cars in a day at our place, it really makes a big difference.
Those are a couple things I wanted to pass on.
6:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much.
Would the committee like to hear from a few others, and then ask the questions? Yes. Okay.
Mr. Long, we haven't heard from you yet. Please go ahead.
6:15 p.m.
Chief Administrative Officer, City of Welland
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thanks again to the standing committee. We certainly appreciate your bringing the committee to the Niagara region. Thank you for that.
I just want to state for the record that the City of Welland is supportive of and is aligned with other municipalities in Niagara and the other key stakeholders you would have heard from today, who really want to create a blueprint to establish Niagara as a key trade corridor within Canada's economy, as well as being a gateway to global markets. For us to be able to achieve that, we have some bottlenecks in the system that we need to get rid of, and we need the support of the federal government and other partners to do that.
In the case of Welland, I would say we've been experiencing a bit of a renaissance over the last few years. Welland, like other industrial manufacturing communities, was hit hard 10 to 15 years ago during the global restructuring and global recession, but over the last three years we've been able to attract almost 1.5 million square feet of new industrial space. One of those companies that's relocated to Welland is GE. They have since sold their plant to Advent International, but the fact of the matter is that Welland and Niagara have the programs, the incentives, the proximity to the U.S. border and the workforce to attract companies of that magnitude.
The companies we've attracted to Welland and the companies we are in the process of attracting, they like Welland and they like Niagara. They like having options other than the QEW. They like having a rail option. They like having a water option. We've had some discussions with the Hamilton Port Authority, specifically Ian Hamilton. I understand he presented here this morning. We've had some discussions with him about partnering with the port authority, as well as the seaway authority, to create a new dock along the Welland Canal. There's demand for marine industrial land. As Mr. Hamilton may have said to you this morning, the Hamilton Port Authority is sold out. They have, I think, 60 businesses on their waiting list. That's not to say that all of those businesses would locate in Niagara along the Welland Canal, but I suspect a large portion of them would. Therefore, we feel there's an opportunity for a partnership between the seaway authority and our friends down the table here, the port authority and other municipal partners.
I should say that we've had one meeting with Minister Garneau to talk about this proposal. We've also had some discussions with his ministerial staff, and I think our conceptual idea was well received by the minister as a way to really enhance and create that trade corridor within Canada's economy.
The other issue I wanted to touch on—but I won't touch on it at any length—is the importance and necessity of creating an alternative beyond the QEW. You've probably heard today about a mid-peninsula highway. That's really important to Welland and Niagara and to the business community here. I won't dwell on it, but suffice it to say that the QEW is no longer an option. It's impacting business competitiveness. We feel it's time for municipal partners and the federal and provincial governments to make a strategic investment in the future-ready infrastructure that we need in our Canadian economy that would, again, really position Niagara and Hamilton as a key trade corridor zone within Canada, but also, as I said earlier, as a key gateway to global markets.
I'd be pleased to answer any questions that you have later.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
6:15 p.m.
Board Director, Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I just want to reiterate a few things and emphasize a few things that have already been said, mostly that the world is changing at the borders really quickly. In all the years that I was involved with borders, it was all about more infrastructure and more staff. What we're finding is that the infrastructure is becoming prohibitively expensive and it's incredibly difficult to get and train more staff.
The good news is that there have been huge advancements made in biometrics, and biometrics, I believe, is going to save the day because what it does is allow a better recognition of the individuals who are crossing the border in a quicker time. It's known that when somebody comes to the border and a CBSA or a CBP officer looks at their picture and they look at the individual they have about a 60% chance of really identifying that it's the individual it's supposed to be. Biometrics is about 99%, and biometrics are instant.
CBP is making huge advancements in that area, and there are pilot projects that are going to take place at the Peace Bridge this summer involving biometrics that will allow for the processing of people in vehicles much faster. The good news is that you can do more people with the same staff and you don't need any new infrastructure. At the Lewiston Bridge right now, the plaza at the Lewiston Bridge, there's $90 million that's going forward. It's a lot of money. You're putting in more lanes and, of course, there comes a time when that's no longer sustainable.
There are things that can be done. I'll summarize it by saying that among some of the key things that can be done is, first of all, for Canada to invest heavily in biometrics because the United States has got a really big head start on it. I think they're on to something really good, and they're implementing in airports now.
Second, Canada really does need to implement a passport card to take advantage of RFID. I talked about this five years ago. When the person from Passport Canada was bringing out a new passport—and he was very proud of it—I asked him at the time, do you have a passport card? He looked at me as if I had two heads. He said it wasn't on their priority list. That was five years ago.
Putting RFID in all the lanes, on which progress is being made, working on biometrics, and a new passport card will go a long way to helping things proceed across the border.
Thank you.
6:20 p.m.
Liberal
6:20 p.m.
Vice-President, External Relations, St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation
In the course of the committee today I heard many times about basically the ability to be able to reach different stakeholders of the region and be able to help each other.
I would like to reassert that the seaway in its mandate of stewardship of a shared resource basically has an open door to reach out to the different parties and participate to be able to see how we can improve the economy, the community reality, the social reality, and also the environmental reality that surrounds us. That's a clear mandate for us and the CMA part 3.
Also, there was a question asked earlier today about the ability for the Welland Canal to be able to have what we see as season optimization or season extension. There was an answer provided, but I would like to complement that answer with some detail.
We know about climate change. We know that climate change provides, I would say, a warmer environment to be able to have a milder set of conditions during the winter, but what climate change also brings about is what we call a greater variability. If we look at the last 12 years, basically seven of those 12 years would have provided a lot of challenges to operating the Welland Canal deep into January. Sometimes the balance between risk and the benefit of a greater season have to be contemplated. That's a portion of the answer that was not provided earlier today.
6:20 p.m.
Liberal
6:25 p.m.
President, Chamber of Marine Commerce
I would like to add, and maybe just pick up on a point. In our discussion, I had mentioned the International Maritime Organization in London, and the need to have a level playing field for emissions. It was a bit of a passing comment and I didn't elaborate, but now that we have an opportunity, perhaps I could explain a bit more. I think this is critically important for the success of the emerging national corridor here.
Like the airline sector, we in the marine shipping industry are regulated at the international level very similarly to the air sector. The air sector is subjected to ICAO and IATA, ICAO being the UN organization setting the standard and IATA the industry association. We have in parallel IMO and ICS, the International Chamber of Shipping. In fact, I sit on the ICS industry board for Canada, regularly waving my Canadian flag. I raise this because the key ethic here is that marine shipping requires a global approach—air and marine are really two global sections—otherwise certain jurisdictions could create a competitive advantage or disadvantage. The idea is to have a level playing field of regulations applying to the entire industry, globally.
The global community is very discouraging of separate regional action and we have an emerging threat here in Canada. There's growing concern that the Canadians may be jumping up and stepping in to create regional action. If they do, it will put the Canadian shipping industry at a disadvantage vis-à-vis international shipping and vis-à-vis American shipping, with a carbon tax. If the carbon tax cascades down, it could, depending on how it applies, affect and apply to the shipping industry.
At the moment, we are part of the carbon emissions trading scheme here in Ontario. That's now being wound up. What's going to replace it? That is the question that still hasn't quite been answered. On the other hand, internationally, we're very much a part of—in fact Canada's leading the charge in some ways—creating this new program, which has just been accepted, to reduce emissions by 50% by 2050. It's a very aggressive and ambitious program and it will require a lot of interesting action, some of it regulated. Some of it will ultimately lead to a carbon levy being applied. That will all be done internationally, so another Canadian-led action on top of that one could put us at a disadvantage. That will affect the potential prosperity of this new national corridor, the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence waterway and it certainly could impact our ability to address the challenge and the opportunity to have even more trucks pulled away from the roads and more traffic moved over to the marine mode, where we all recognize we have an environmental opportunity.
In a backhanded way, that carbon tax could do just the opposite, yet we want to encourage more traffic, as we discussed earlier, away from the congested roads, which are heavy environmental polluters and so forth.
I just wanted to raise that issue with the committee because it may be something we want to talk about further.
6:25 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Thank you.
I wanted to point out that I really valued the fact that Bruce and Jean stayed and listened to some of the other presenters.
Of course, in our discussions earlier today, we asked a bunch of questions. I'm just wondering, now that we've had a chance to consider those questions, what take-aways you all have from this session today.
Don't all jump at once now.
6:25 p.m.
Director, Market Development, St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation
I think it came up a number of times during the discussion that we had a number of different groups, a number of different parties and a number of different stakeholders operating in their own silos, and that was something we need to work on, as far as stakeholder groups were concerned. I know there was a lot of discussion around how to change that. As we indicated to you earlier today, we certainly would embrace that and would look forward to being a part of that.
As Jean pointed out, in terms of any discussions about real estate around the Welland Canal, we've certainly been open to having those discussions with all parties and all stakeholders. Again, our door is always open. For us, that's one of today's big take-aways.