Good morning, Madam Chair. Thank you very much for the invitation to speak here.
The port of Nanaimo is a medium-sized port, of the 18 port authorities that are classed as federal port authorities. Traditionally it was a coal port. It moved on to become a forestry and lumber port, and more recently it has become multi-purpose, simply because people are looking at the island differently than they did many years ago. Everyone considers the island as a place where people go to retire. By way of examples of recent stats in Nanaimo, the population is 90,000 and the average age today is 44.6 years. The average age in British Columbia is 44.1 years. In 2014-15, there was a 27% increase in housing starts in Nanaimo. That is an example of what is going on in the Regional District of Nanaimo and in Vancouver.
One of the big drivers is the cost of living in the Lower Mainland and, as Peter said, the availability of industrial land in the Lower Mainland. There is a lot of industrial land available on the island, as it is 32,000 square kilometres. The cost of land to lease, and the cost of land to buy, is about one tenth of the cost here in the Lower Mainland.
One of the examples of the diversification that we've recently introduced is a vehicle processing centre, which is under construction in Nanaimo. This is to bring cars in from Europe, which are going to be converted or made into Canadian cars: all the software is updated, and all the stickers they want in English and French, etc. That happens in a vehicle processing centre. Those European cars will be shipped back from the island to the Lower Mainland, and eventually into the western provinces. The driver for that was the availability of industrial land right on the water, at an acceptable dollar-per-square-foot rate. That's what drove that project.
We're looking at Duke Point, which is our container terminal and heavy industrial area, where we are feeding products from Vancouver Island to the Lower Mainland for international shipping. A lot of manufacturing is starting to take place on Vancouver Island. There is very limited direct shipping from Vancouver Island to the rest of the world. You have to come into Vancouver, and then you have to move to another ship in Vancouver. Then you go to the rest of the world. Some of the manufacturers have told me that the cost to go from the island to Vancouver is the same as the cost to go from Vancouver to China. That's simply because of the number of times you touch the product. Obviously it adds to the cost of the transportation across the Salish Sea.
We've got to look at this in the future. We're 27 nautical miles away from Vancouver. This morning it took me 20 minutes to fly by helicopter from Nanaimo to downtown Vancouver, and I could probably beat someone to this office today, in comparison to someone coming from Surrey. It's a lot faster for me to come from the island.
I've mentioned to Robin, Peter's boss, that we are complementary to the port of Vancouver, because of our closeness to the Lower Mainland, the availability of skilled workers and the availability of industrial land.
My final point is this. There are 800,000 people living on Vancouver Island today, projected to grow to 1.5 million people. I don't think it's a question of whether we ever have an earthquake; it's a question of when we'll have an earthquake. We have no warehousing on the island. There are two companies that warehouse: Sobeys and Quality Foods, one in Victoria and one in Qualicum Beach. We live in a just-in-time economy. They estimate that fuel, food—even beer and wine—will run out on the island within a week if we're cut off from the Lower Mainland.
We have a growing population. We have a tremendous opportunity to provide more to trade for Canada, yet we are sitting on the edge if there's a major national disaster. If you look at the map of Vancouver Island, you see that one road goes north to south—it's nearly east to west—from Victoria up to Port Hardy. It goes over the Malahat. You've probably heard about the Malahat being cut off by road accidents, etc. You cut that off for a long period of time, and the north of the island doesn't have connections.
As the port of Nanaimo, part of our vision is to actually grow that connection to the Lower Mainland, not simply for trade but also for the future, for emergency purposes.
Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to answering any questions.