Transport Committee on March 31st, 2022

[Steve Pratte]

On the labour side, under the Canada Labour Code, there are mechanisms in place now. Perhaps a role.... We could perhaps migrate towards having longer contracts between the various labour unions and the employers, because we seem to be on a two-year or three-year cycle, which puts that vulnerability in. Oftentimes, in the shipping community, shippers see that, eventually, these disputes end up in binding arbitration two days or eight days after the actual strike or lockout. Is there a way to perhaps effect that, prior to the actual lockout occurring? Prior to a lockout, the railways have to start winding down their operations. Even if the lockout or strike doesn't occur, they have to wind operations back up, which has an immediate, tangible impact on the supply chain for all shippers.

To your second point around infrastructure, we see individual companies in our supply chain putting in investments. Certainly, around prioritizing, the companies have their own...what they need to do and the shippers do what they need to do. A role of government could be to have.... Some of this was talked about in the 2015 Canada Transportation Act review, which might seem like a lifetime ago, but it's only been seven years. There were some good things in there around governance. That's a role the federal government could play around long-term infrastructure planning, investment, etc.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

I think the speed of the government's response, when there is an issue, is critical. I'll take a look at that report.

With respect to the ports, I'm interested in understanding Canada's position in sustaining our supply chain there, especially since we've had issues with the B.C. disasters—flooding, etc. How are we positioned for growth? How are we positioned, right now, for capacity in Canada?

Perhaps Christian can answer that one.

[Christian Buhagiar]

We're not positioned for growth. We have a limited capacity. We're over that capacity, in some sense, which is why we have the issues we talked about regarding ships at sea. We're not going to speed that up unless we do two things.

One will be changing the process of how ports work. That's going to require automation and investment. Two, we have to open up additional international gateway ports. It's not as if we only have five ports in the country, but we only have five ports that act as international gateways. If we need to open up more, I think that's a conversation for the government, and for parts of the government such as CBSA, to have in order to ensure that we can have growth.

We all want growth in the economy. The question is very apt in that sense, but we don't have capacity now. We're not going to clear the backlog we have in the next few days, which the members need to recognize. If you want growth, you're going to have to automate and expand new international gateways for us.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

I heard about the shipping container shortage. Is there anything the federal government could do there?

I'll put that out to anybody who wants to weigh in.

[Christian Buhagiar]

Only if you're going to open up a company and make them.... I say that in jest. I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but there are only so many containers that are made and in the field, so unless we're going to make more, it is a challenge.

Dwell time is an issue, and the more we can do to ensure that we empty containers as quickly as possible and get them back into the system.... That's critical, but some of that is due to the fact that we do not have enough capacity. Certainly, during the pandemic, we were backed up. Because we were backed up, we couldn't empty containers and get containers back into the system quickly enough. We ran out of warehouse space in a lot of sectors, so warehouses became the containers. There is a limited number of containers in the world.

We struggle with geopolitical considerations—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Buhagiar and Ms. Gladu.

Next, we have Mr. Iacono.

Mr. Iacono, the floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Buhagiar, how could better data collection and sharing improve our supply chains?

Can you give us some examples?

[Christian Buhagiar]

Mr. Chair, this is an interesting question, and we won't have time for the response. We might take it off-line, if the member wishes.

Everybody believes the sharing of data will be the panacea. Certainly, visibility and the sharing of data are important and critical, but sharing data in and of itself is not going to be the answer. In fact, we don't even use the same data across all the systems that work within the supply chain. The ability to have a single operative working language for what we're talking about doesn't exist yet.

If the member would like.... In the U.S., they're looking at a study called “FLOW”, which is trying to bring together a number of parties to look at this. There are a number of thoughtful individuals in the supply chain who think this won't resolve the issue, though, because they're not looking at the right issue.

Again, I'm happy if the member would like to take this off-line and have a conversation at some point, or I'll share back to the committee. It is a complicated issue, actually, and one that I think we should understand, because we talk a lot about data sharing in the supply chain, and visibility. I've mentioned it myself.

It's not as simple as it seems, but it's a great question and one I think the committee should unpack.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

You mentioned that many collect different types of data. Is it possible to share with us what data you collect and why, at least, so we can look at it around the globe? Why are X and Y collecting such data? This way we can figure out where to go with that. It could help us a lot, since you are saying not everybody is collecting the same type of data. If that could be provided to the clerk, I'd appreciate it.

[Christian Buhagiar]

We will provide that to the committee through the clerk.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you.

My question is for Mr. Lemaire or Mr. Carey.

Would your organization or your member companies be willing to share proprietary data to improve the fluidity of our supply chains?

[Ron Lemaire]

Perhaps I can start. Thank you for the question.

There may not be a need to share exclusive data relative to the data that is being collected. I think the bigger question is how we consolidate the data the government itself is collecting and how we more effectively leverage that data.

In terms of the complexity around moving food, you start by looking at the import and export data. We have, through CFIA, an import-export portal. Beyond that, streamlining more effective mechanisms so data is shared throughout departments is key. The reality for industry is that, if there's non-competitive data missing that can be made available, most definitely...whether leveraging and using the associations to help provide that data or sitting down one-on-one.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Can you provide us with the type of data you collect, since we're hearing that everybody collects different data? Second, is there any type of data you would not share, and why? This gives us an understanding. Could you also provide us with that?

[Ron Lemaire]

I can, most certainly.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

What information would you insist on keeping confidential?

[Dave Carey]

We can certainly provide data. The data for imports and exports of canola is publicly available. It's all done through harmonized sales codes. We have all of that.

The data we really track—which Steve does—is on the performance of the railways. We have grain-shipping data and reports that Steve can walk you through, which we can certainly share with the committee. We spend a lot of time working with grain shippers to understand the performance of the railroads and see where those bottlenecks are. We can see when there are 14 ships off the Port of Vancouver that are idling and costing grain companies money, which means they might offer less money to farmers. We certainly have reports in spades.

My colleague Steve and I can talk off-line about what would be the most appropriate, but we're happy to share our data. The rest of it is publicly available, as it goes through the harmonized sales system. Thank you for the opportunity to share that.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you.

This is a question for all of you.

What countries do you think are the best examples in terms of getting supply chains right? Obviously, if you're going to highlight one country, you certainly know their data or what their interest is. What would you suggest?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Whoever takes that one on, please give a quick response.

[Christian Buhagiar]

I think it goes back to my earlier comment to one of the members.

I said that a national strategy would be great but a North American strategy would be even greater. I don't know whether anyone has the secret sauce yet, but in Europe, at least—because of the European Union—they're able to look at things beyond the individual borders of countries. If we had the opportunity to do that in North America, we would probably do better. That would be one place to look, only because their construct allows them to work as a unit as opposed to individual countries.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Buhagiar and Mr. Iacono.

Next, we have Mr. Dowdall.

Mr. Dowdall, the floor is now yours. You have five minutes.

[Terry Dowdall, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the presenters here today. It's certainly interesting to listen to all of them and see the issues we have today, which seem to be continuing.

I don't know exactly to whom I'd put my question.

I've had discussions with some of the port authorities and with different companies having issues with shipping in the last little while, and I'm curious. The comment I heard back quite often from these people is that they want to expand what they are doing, and they sometimes want to have extra spots for storage. What I'm hearing quite often from those individuals is that the problem definitely seems to be that there's a bureaucratic wall up. Expansion is taking long periods of time, large investment and large dollars. They want to go forward, but I think we're going to have a major problem, as we do with the housing market, where we don't realize the issue is as big as it is and we don't realize that we need to act today. I'm getting a lot of red tape and bureaucratic push-back.

I'm interested to hear from our presenters if that's what they're hearing, as well, because it is so important that we move forward. This is going to be a problem. COVID aside and climate change aside, this is a major issue that we all have to address.

[Christian Buhagiar]

Mr. Chair, I'm happy to respond.

We hear similar things. Again, the investments that private corporations wish to make need the right environment, and what we hear is that the environment is one.... First of all, these are costly infrastructure investments. This already suggests that private corporations are going to be thoughtful about what they're going to do. When you layer lengthy approval periods on top of that, you end up with an environment where, alone, private sector corporations are going to be less apt to make those investments. It's the climate that we create.

I will say that we also hear this climate can be assisted, of course, by public-private partnerships and government contributions, but when the expectation is that private sector is going to do it within that type of environment—costly to do, with slow approval processes—it becomes less of an environment and climate where they are apt to make those investments.

[Terry Dowdall, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

As a supplement to that.... You said earlier that there is basically just one way to get your products and it's a huge issue—exporting and importing tariffs. It's just constant. I am constantly hearing from people in my riding, no matter what industry they are in. I'm in an agricultural riding, as well.

I'm just wondering. When you say you might need another track, what are the chances of something like that happening in today's environment, that we're actually going to come up with a solution that will address the problem?

[Ron Lemaire]

Mr. Chair, perhaps I could quickly answer that.

The federal government has put dollars aside looking at the national trade corridors fund—$1.9 billion—and also looking at December funding on the fluidity of supply chains. If we're going to open up new international trade corridors, do we have CBSA? I think Christian mentioned push-back from some of the departments around resources.

How many people do we have from CBSA to man those new ports, and from CFIA on food safety? Do we have the appropriate CULT chain mechanism in place within those ports? You start going through the basic logistical human resources and infrastructure requirements that are needed to update these facilities. It's not a short-term solution, but it is something that has to start. We use the example of Halifax. When the Montreal port was under strike, everyone diverted either to the U.S. or to Halifax. Halifax couldn't handle the volume of product going through, so we had greater delays coming out of the Halifax port.

There is a need to look at a strategic approach around the various agencies involved in just manning the system.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

You have about 10 seconds left, Mr. Dowdall.