Transport Committee on Sept. 26th, 2018

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Do you have any thoughts or comments on this?

[Parm Sidhu]

I'm an employee of the City of Abbotsford, so the City of Abbotsford employs us. The city council, through virtue of a bylaw, formed an airport authority of 11 members from the business community. Six are local and five are from the greater metro Vancouver area.

[Geoff Dickson]

I guess I would just ask you what problem you would be trying to solve that you can't through an elected process—

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

The problem that I would be.... Well, it's not “I”; the problem, people are starting to say to me, is that those on the airport authority are no longer either representing or listening to the concerns of the public. Be it noise or be it almost....

It seems as though the airport user fees are consistently going up, and the airport authority is not really accountable to anybody. I mean, they're appointed by the business community or whomever, or a provincial government here or there. Users of the airport or people living on a flight path of the airport are starting to say that they don't have any control over it.

Quite frankly, as elected officials, we don't have a whole lot of control either. I don't want this to be misconstrued, but it's kind of an old boys’ club that runs some of these airport authorities these days.

As I say, I think maybe it's unfair to ask you guys these questions, because obviously I'm referring to your bosses. I do think it is becoming more and more an issue that the public is actually starting to pay attention to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Aubin, do you have any questions? Everybody's all right? Okay, terrific.

Thank you so much. You're the last panel for today. Tomorrow we do site visits and so on.

To the committee, we will suspend now and the witnesses will leave. Before we start our 5:30 session, we need a few minutes to do some committee business.

Again, gentlemen, thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I will reconvene the meeting.

This is our open mike session. It's a short time in our program when we allow a few minutes for someone who might want to mention something to us while we're here and didn't have a chance to be a part of the panels.

We have one individual by the name of Peter Luckham. Peter, welcome.

We'll open the mike so you can share comments that you might want to share with us.

[Peter Luckham, Chair, Islands Trust Council, Islands Trust]

Just for clarity, I understood from the written materials that I saw that it was three minutes. I've prepared for three minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

That's fine.

[Peter Luckham]

Okay. Good afternoon.

My name is Peter Luckham. I want to acknowledge that we are here on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh first nations.

I am the chair of the Islands Trust Council. The Islands Trust Council is a federation of local government bodies representing 36,000 residents and non-resident property owners.

The Islands Trust area is made up of more than 460 islands in the southern Strait of Georgia and Howe Sound. The Islands Trust is mandated through provincial legislation to preserve and protect the unique environment and amenities of the Islands Trust area. We achieve this mandate through planning, regulation, land conservation, and co-operation with other agencies.

I am here today to ask for your co-operation and bring to your attention the impacts that supply chain issues have on the communities and the environment in the Islands Trust area.

Over the past 10 years the number of coal, grain, and break-bulk cargo ships anchoring in the southern Gulf Islands region while waiting to access the port of Vancouver has increased dramatically. The size of these vessels is increasing and the length of time these ships spend at anchor is also much longer.

We understand that these ships end up sitting at anchor due to insufficient port infrastructure and long-standing supply chain problems with railways. While at anchor, these ships generate significant amounts of noise, as well as light and air pollution, and one anchorage in Plumper Sound is used to transfer gypsum from ships to barges. This noisy activity is conducted at night directly adjacent to quiet residential neighbourhoods, and, crucially, is outside the oversight of a port authority.

In addition to the impacts on the quality of life for our local communities, there are many concerns about the potential risks commercial vessels at anchor pose to the marine environment, marine species, and public health. The situation was preventable. It is also fixable. We believe that railways, the port, and government have failed to adequately plan and invest in infrastructure for the growth of exports.

Predictions are that anchorage use will continue to increase unless the federal government and the port of Vancouver implement solutions now.

We have raised our concerns with the industry and the federal government by asking with UBCM endorsement for a 20-year mitigation plan that would reduce the need for vessels to go to anchor.

To put it simple, Canada's long-term vision for shipping should not include freighter anchorages and their related industrial activities in the trust area.

The trust council at its September 2018 meeting made the following public statement:

Islands Trust Council calls upon the federal government to take all measures possible to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, the use of the 33 commercial freighter anchorage sites throughout the Southern Gulf Islands collectively referred to by Transport Canada as the South Coast of British Columbia.

We are committed to continue to work constructively with you and industry to resolve these issues. As a region of significant biodiversity and unique beauty, its protection has been recognized as a provincial interest. It has to be in the national interest.

I ask for your attention to these important matters in your review.

I thank you for hearing me today. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

We appreciate you coming out.

Go ahead, Mr. Hardie.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Actually, I have it on my list to ask some of the ports people and I didn't get that chance. I'm glad that you brought it up. It's one of those about whether we are the victims of our own success in terms of attracting international trade, both in and out, I suppose.

A lot of the effort that we put in today, and in fact earlier this week in the Niagara region, was to talk about the gaps and the lack of, if you like, connected planning.

The port of Vancouver itself, especially Burrard Inlet and the areas that would obviously affect the anchorages that you're talking about, are going to be at capacity. There's not an awful lot more you can do in there without some amazingly large investments whereby the laws of diminishing returns are thoroughly broken.

Have you thought about options like the port of Nanaimo or even the port of Alberni or the port of Squamish, where facilities exist that may be underutilized and where we could divert some of these vessels, obviously with the appropriate supply chains to give them what they need?

[Peter Luckham]

Thank you for your comments.

Certainly we are interested in looking at solutions. There has been lots of conversation about some of the utilization of other ports, specifically around the port of Nanaimo, which is in our area as well. We would be interested in the conversation. Obviously, you would need to have that conversation with those other ports.

The primary concern here is that a parking lot in the southern Gulf Islands, which is proposed as a potential national park area through the national marine conservation area program, seems inappropriate for the use that is presently being undertaken.

I grant you, the solution is not easy. We're not asking for this to end immediately, but we want to see some vision and plan to mitigate and ultimately eliminate these vessels from a place that seems so very inappropriate to us who live there.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Are these mainly bulk ships?

[Peter Luckham]

They are coal ships, actually.

In the last six months, the implementation of the interim protocol agreement, which you might be familiar with, put into place, through the OPP program, the oceans protection plan, a method of analyzing the anchorages' information. Cowichan Bay got the bulk of the coal ships over the last many years. Now those coal ships are also being distributed.

It's bulk ships and coal ships, as well as some other materials. It's hard for me to identify all of the ships and what the materials are.

Through the interim protocol process that data is being collected, so there should be some analysis available on that.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Most of the coal, I presume, comes out of Deltaport.

[Peter Luckham]

That's correct.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Do you have any sense as to why those ships wouldn't be moved in and out fairly quickly? That's a pretty massive port. They usually have a pretty good supply of coal on hand.

[Peter Luckham]

Sir, that is a brilliant question. It is something that none of us knows the answer to among the six different anchorage groups based on community interest, including Plumper Sound, Cowichan Bay, Trincomali Channel, Stuart Channel, and Gabriola Island. That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that. It is a significant number of vessels anchoring for a significant number of days.

I do know that in the last month there was a little anomaly. There was a failure of some mechanical device at the south terminal there, so there were vessels that were actually redirected and then anchored. That added more vessels to what is already a problem.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

We'll have a chance to ask that question, actually, because we'll spend some time at Deltaport tomorrow.

[Peter Luckham]

Perfect.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I suppose it would be counterproductive to talk about shore-supplied power. You don't want the anchorages there, period. Is that pretty much it?

[Peter Luckham]

Yes, that is the ultimate solution. There would be no vessel anchorages other than those that require safe harbour or emergency anchorage in the event of a situation that's beyond the control of the ship's master. We accept and acknowledge that there's a necessity for that.

I would say that over the years that this activity has been going on, and in all the time that I've lived on Thetis Island, which is some 30 years now, it has been tolerated, and to some extent understood, that it is in the national interest. The number of vessels, the length of stay, and now the much greater awareness of the potential impacts that are happening from these vessels has raised awareness to the point where people simply want them to go away.

In the broader picture, I don't think it's an unreasonable request. If there's a necessity to service these vessels in terms of exporting goods from this country, which is for all of our benefit, then we need to have a better way to handle the vessels. They sometimes anchor for not just days at a time but weeks at a time, and even, in some situations, months.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

It's quite an expensive proposition.

I am concerned about your comments on the gypsum transfer. It seems to be falling outside of anybody's jurisdiction, perhaps with the exception of the Coast Guard.

[Peter Luckham]

I think “oversight” is the word that I probably used. I think CFL is the company that operates that; I might be wrong. They have been operating that there for many years. My father used to live on Pender Island, and he used to complain about it. That's at least 25 years ago.

In those days, it was simply transferring gypsum from a barge into a vessel on a conveyer belt. You couldn't see the other island across the channel for the amount of dust and debris in the air.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Is that still the case?