Transport Committee on Sept. 26th, 2018

[Peter Luckham]

No. That has changed dramatically in the last, let's say, five or 10 years. The company that is engaged in that business has built a new ship that significantly reduces the amount of dust.

However, the most disturbing piece of this is that it's happening in Plumper Sound, which is outside of radar surveillance or other kinds of observation of the vessel. It operates at night. If you can imagine with me for a moment, the ship comes in and drops the anchor to a lot of din as the anchor chain goes over the side. The tugs come in, the barges come in. They connect up all the equipment, and they start transferring the gypsum onto these vessels with a lot of noise, in essentially a residential neighbourhood—right offshore.

You can well imagine that's disturbing for people. There are bright lights associated with that, so it's illuminated the entire time. It happens all night and is gone in the morning. You can imagine that those bright lights and that noise not only affect the residents of the area, but also potentially the wildlife—the birds and other animals that have their habitat in the seas there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Go ahead, Monsieur Aubin.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you for being with us.

I am very concerned with this question. I also asked it this morning of representatives from the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. As a possible solution, they told me that it had to be done through two measures: first, a gain in productivity in loading and unloading ships at the port itself, and then significant investment in infrastructure to be able to do more and to do it faster.

This may resemble a virtuous circle, but I fear that, the day these two goals are achieved—a gain in productivity and investments in infrastructure—ship traffic will increase. In fact, it would then be possible to handle a greater proportion of goods.

Is there also a problem regarding ship traffic?

[Peter Luckham]

I'll address your second question first, because indeed there are lots of questions and concerns about how the vessels travel through the Salish Sea.

They come in through the bottom end of the Gulf Islands and travel all the way up almost to Nanaimo, in what are very narrow bodies of water or small channels.

As a scuba diver, I do a lot of diving around the Gulf Islands. There are an awful lot of shoals and rocks that are in very close proximity to the transit of these vessels. There are suggestions that these vessels represent navigation hazards because they're slow-moving, although some people think they move too fast. Also, there are kayakers, other vessels, fishing equipment and gear, commercial fishers and all that sort of stuff. There are concerns about navigation.

Also, in the event of human error or mechanical failure, there are concerns about what the opportunities would be for that vessel to recover. I acknowledge that the pilotage authority has very professional masters in charge of the vessels when they're transiting, but the concern is that if there's a mechanical or human error that causes a ship to lose power or propulsion in any way, there might be risks amongst the islands.

With regard to your first question, you are absolutely right. That's why we have asked for a 20-year vision, a mitigation plan. I think we need to upgrade the infrastructure and the capacity of the port to handle these vessels in a different way.

There are some suggestions about what they refer to as “go to buoy”, so that a vessel in English Bay, for instance, could go to a mooring buoy, tie up, potentially have some servicing as a function of that, but also increase the density of the vessels that are directly available to the port. That would then minimize the number of transits that a vessel needs to do from the Gulf Islands anchorages to the port. It would simply have to go from the port to English Bay, and then it would be gone.

Also, one of the other issues that is ongoing, which may change over time, is that some of these vessels carry different cargoes. They come into the port, into the terminal, to get one particular grain or material and load that, and then they go back out to the anchorage until the next product is available and then return again, so there are quite a number of transits that happen in some situations.

Certainly if you increase the capacity—human nature seems to be that you would want to increase the demand and deliver more product—I think that's where we need to have a much better long-term plan for shipping out of the port of Vancouver.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

[Peter Luckham]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Badawey is next.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

My first question, not knowing the area as well as you do or maybe Ken does, is this: what is the zoning of the land that's been affected by the operations—I'll use that word—you're speaking of?

[Peter Luckham]

For the most part, it's rural-residential.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

It's rural-residential, on land. With that said, any industrial or light industrial activities would have to go through an official plan review or rezoning and all that fun stuff you otherwise have to go through to then operate in that area.

[Peter Luckham]

You are correct. What's significant here is that the Islands Trust is also zoned. The use is permissible on the surface of the water or on the sea floor. There's lots of conversation about who owns what part—the sea floor, the water column, or the surface—but we have zoning for the most part throughout the Islands Trust area that actually does not permit commercial vessel anchorages.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

I'm not sure what jurisdiction that would hold, in terms of who is responsible. I won't go there and I'll let that be for now, but I would assume that any activity on the water would be the responsibility of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, meaning the federal government, bottom line.

I'm trying to get to a solution or a recommendation for you on what steps to take so that you can get some resolution to this. What that may be is, one, to get the municipality involved with an argument to the federal government that in fact this activity is not conducive with the adjacent land, simply because the adjacent land is not industrial, and that therefore the use should be moved to an area that is conducive to what's on the land vis-à-vis being industrial in nature and therefore aligns with the area. Yes, it's still going to have noise. Yes, it's still going to have gypsum and nighttime activity; however, because the land is zoned for that kind of activity and the expectation is to have that type of activity in that zoning, then it would be more appropriate to have that happen there, versus where you're at.

I'm just trying to give you some recommendations on what direction to take, versus leaving here and getting no satisfaction. That might be something you want to consider. The municipality goes to bat with respect to the zoning of the land, meaning no activity on the water, which makes it not conducive and moves it down the way where it's more conducive and it aligns with the zoning of those particular jurisdictions.

[Peter Luckham]

I can't thank you enough for those comments. We don't actually have a municipality. The Islands Trust is the agency that has the authority.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

It's whoever it may be.

[Peter Luckham]

That is us, and we have been on that path for some time, and indeed there is question around the jurisdiction. I can't say definitively what the solution is, but we believe there is a solution there somewhere that is actually associated with either the Canada Shipping Act or the Marine Transportation Security Act.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

It's a grey area, because it is happening in the water. I know, being in my former life a municipal representative and on the water, that there were activities with gypsum and other things that we ran into, and quite frankly we did have some success with the federal government—probably the last three federal governments—with those activities being mitigated to some extent, and with that we had some resolution to it. Although you still have a few people who aren't happy with how it was resolved, we have 95% resolution to it.

I'm just trying to help you out in terms of what direction to take. If you happen to be the entity that deals with that, I'm not sure who your member of Parliament is, but you might want to get them involved and then go from there.

[Peter Luckham]

We're actually meeting on Friday with the two members of Parliament from our area, Sheila Malcolmson and Alistair MacGregor. Indeed, I've met with the Minister of Transport as well, Marc Garneau, to bring this issue to his attention. Your comments are exactly right; this use is incompatible with the upland zoning.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Hardie is next.

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

The other question is, all right, if not in your backyard, where?

I used to live Squamish. You know Howe Sound; there's the old mill site....

[Peter Luckham]

Yes, Woodfibre.

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

Woodfibre, Port Mellon.... Britannia could be developed, I suppose. I wouldn't want to put it off Lions Bay. Even with Rafe Mair's passing, there would still be a lot of cranky people there.

Seriously, though, if they went someplace else to avoid being tagged as a beggar-thy-neighbour kind of person, where do you think they could go that might be a lot more acceptable?

[Peter Luckham]

I think it would be inappropriate for me to hazard a guess on a neighbouring community where they might go, but I will say that the islands in Howe Sound are within the Islands Trust area, so I certainly don't want them there either.

I would also suggest that actually very few vessels anchor in that area, because it is I guess potentially more treacherous than even the southern Gulf Islands. In fact, there are a lot of concerns about the LNG plant, which is now going in at Woodfibre, in that those LNG vessels will be transiting there. I think the likelihood of these ships going up in that direction is slim to none.

What you suggested was whether the port authorities that exist should be taking some of that capacity. In reflecting upon your question earlier, I know that obviously one of the issues is getting the raw product from Vancouver to island-based ports, which would be problematic in itself, because there would have to be some rail component that got over to Vancouver Island and then got out to Port Alberni, for instance.

In terms of where they would go, we don't know the answer. We're looking to the government to find solutions, and I think that ultimately the port authority, if it has the capacity to handle a certain amount of goods, is in fact no different from a grocery store or a clothing store that is required to have parking for its customers, and we don't consider the Gulf Islands appropriate parking.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Nobody's going to really disagree with what you've just said, Mr. Luckham.

Are there any other comments?

Thank you very much for coming and for sharing that information and your concerns with the committee. That's what this is all about.

[Peter Luckham]

Thank you for your time. Thank you very much for the very insightful questions, and I appreciate the advice. We look forward to the outcome report of your review.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

Not seeing any further discussion or comments, I will adjourn the meeting for today.