Transport Committee on April 4th, 2022

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I'm tempted to ask that question of some of the other witnesses. I'll maybe ask it of Mr. Dekovic.

When you think about risks to Canada's supply chain in the decades to come, what rises to the top? I'm thinking particularly of external risks that threaten our supply chain.

[Marko Dekovic]

Thank you for that question.

It's simply to do with the resiliency of the pipe, road and rail, or the gateway corridor, if you want to call it that. That would be the number one risk.

If you look at investments that are happening.... In the Port of Prince Rupert, the Dubai Ports World terminal operator there is working hand in hand with the port authority and making investments. If you look at the Port of Vancouver, be it in the grain sector or the breakbulk sector, and the container terminals such as ourselves, they are making significant investments. That is not where the risk is. There is no risk that the private sector is not going to invest in capacity.

However, if next year there's another flood or another fire, what have we done to ensure that all those investments in terminal operators that have occurred on the west coast...can continue to provide services to the supply chain? It is that risk. How do we build additional road, rail and gateway pipe, if you will, for the supply chain to reach the west coast? That is the number one risk.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thanks for that. It's a great segue into my next question.

You're familiar, of course, with the plans in Prince Rupert to expand the port's capacity. It's an exciting phase for them. They've seen tremendous growth over the years.

Could you explain how investing in alternative ports—and you touched on it a little bit—builds redundancy, and how it can alleviate some of the pressures we see when there are major events that cut off access?

[Marko Dekovic]

It's a great question.

Prince Rupert, as you noted, is making investments with their container terminal operator. You have us, here in Vancouver, building our Deltaport berth as an expansion project to add capacity.

Ports and port terminals will be ready, but the question is how we get goods to them, and is one redundant over the other? With regard to Prince Rupert and Prince Rupert container terminals, we saw that when there were challenges in the Lower Mainland, some cargoes did move there. However, ultimately Prince Rupert has a slightly different offering. There is no two-million-plus local market up in Prince Rupert. It's a great gateway port that is serviced by one rail line.

Again, we should be looking at that, as well as the resiliency of Prince Rupert for Vancouver. Should it have more rail capacity and more diversity of offerings there to truly be a backup for the Vancouver gateway?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dekovic and Mr. Bachrach.

Next we have Mr. Jeneroux.

The floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's good to see a lot of familiar faces here again, particularly Mr. Gooch and Mr. Dekovic. I'll focus some of my questions to you guys.

We're seeing a lot of supply chain issues facing the housing market when it comes to supplies and materials when we're building homes.

Marko, I look at places like English Bay and a number of those barges out there. They have a variety of materials on them, but they continue to sit there for months and months on end. I understand that a lot of the solutions come from, as we heard last time, artificial intelligence and other high-investment pieces. However, when we're facing the situation we are in right now, I'm hoping that you'll be able to supply us with some supply chain things we can suggest that are more immediate.

I'll probably start with Marko, and then maybe move on to Mr. Gooch. I pick on the Vancouver port; it was brought up that it's the same on both sides of the country, but if we could focus there perhaps to start, it would be helpful.

[Marko Dekovic]

Thanks for your question.

I assume you're referring to the barge in English Bay, the barge that beached itself—

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

I mean, other than that barge. That's the one that's seizing everybody's attention, but I mean other than that one barge.

[Marko Dekovic]

There are vessels in anchorages in the port of Vancouver that you would see in English Bay. There are a variety of vessels, mostly bulk ships. There are some container ships. I really can't comment much on the bulk carriers, but on the container ships, yes, there are about a dozen or so vessels that are backed up across all terminals.

There are four container terminals in Vancouver, as you know. Two are operated by GCT, our company, and two by Dubai Ports World.

We're catching up, working away as the rail velocity starts picking up. Really, that has been the challenge. The reason the vessels are backed up in anchorages is that the velocity of rail has been a challenge since the fires, and then the subsequent floods. It is picking up. We're working very closely with our rail supply chain partners, and we're working on strategies on how to quickly get back to normalcy in the supply chain, but it will take some time. It will probably take another 90 days or so to get there, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Before we move on to Mr. Gooch, maybe you could comment on that, Marko.

I remember that a few years back, when we were there as a committee, you provided a wonderful opportunity for us to see it first-hand. There were some real trucking issues with a real backlog. Is that less of a factor now? You speak to rail. Is that on top of the trucking concerns that were there in the past?

[Marko Dekovic]

In my opinion, local drayage issues have been solved, largely due to the collaboration between provincial and federal authorities. We have, for a while now, implemented a truck reservation system. There are also payments made by terminal operators to trucking operators if we take too long to process. Those are all innovations that don't exist in other ports. We operate two terminals in the port of New York and New Jersey. In New York and New Jersey, there is no truck reservation system. There are no financial incentives for terminal operators to move trucks to the gates.

We're seeing some emergency reservations in L.A. Long Beach, but it's still a long way away from how our terminals operate in Canada. There are no night gates either. We've been operating night gates for trucking, as the demand requires, for a while, probably since 2014 or 2015. Those things are just not occurring in other port complexes across North America, particularly in the U.S.

We have largely addressed those challenges. Probably the only thing we're hearing right now from the trucking community is the rapid increase in the cost of gas and fuel to continue providing the services that truckers do.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Great.

I'll go over to you, Mr. Gooch, on some of the immediate solutions that we could suggest as a committee as part of a report after this study.

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

Mr. Dekovic had some great comments on what's going on specific to Vancouver. I'd encourage you to meet with Vancouver in terms of what they're looking at. I know that in addition to their work on the longer-term capacity concerns, they have some immediate concerns around the container capacity available to them and the storage for containers. Industrial lands in the Vancouver area, for example, are a big concern for them.

Really, I wouldn't want to get into too many of the Vancouver-specific issues, given my newness in the organization. They're much better at speaking for themselves than I am on their behalf.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gooch.

Thank you very much, Mr. Jeneroux.

Next we have Mr. Iacono.

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

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

Thank you, Chair.

Greetings to everyone. The topic we are discussing is very interesting.

Mr. Gooch or Ms. Murray, can you talk to us about the climate emergencies we saw on the west coast last year and the repercussions they had on the port system?

What lessons were learned from these events?

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

I can start to answer that question.

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

If you're comfortable in English, go ahead.

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

I will proceed in English.

I don't feel I can speak to what specifically was happening in Vancouver. I think the biggest lesson we can take away from that, however, is that we do need to plan for more events like this. I know the word that's been used a lot here is “resiliency”. That's really a key word for us in terms of what we're talking about. It's resiliency for the individual ports, but also for our system, so that when there are disruptions, we have alternatives and places where we can move goods by sea or other modes of transportation.

There are so many players involved, as we see around the table. You had the study last week. You have the study today. You could probably have several more sessions, because there are so many different players involved in this. One of the best things you've done is bring everybody together through the national supply chain summit that we had in January. Even within the federal family, we saw how many individuals within cabinet hold a key portion of our supply chain. It's not just Minister Alghabra or Minister Champagne.

We're looking forward, at Canada's port authorities, to see where this work goes next—the work of the task force and the various working groups that stem from that summit.

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

Thank you, Mr. Gooch.

How was the collaboration between the port authorities, the different levels of government, industry and the other stakeholders during these crises?

What worked and what were the challenges?

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

I have to say, given that I started in February, I'm really not the best person to weigh in on that, because I was not there. At the time, I was facing challenges with our airports. I could testify on that, but that's not what we're here for today.

Really, I wouldn't feel comfortable answering that, given that I was not here at that time.

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

Does anybody else have any response to that?

Since no one can answer my question, I will move on to another topic.

Mr. Gooch, how have the blockades of the past few years affected our ports?

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

My understanding is that our ports have actually managed much better than could have been expected, and certainly better than other ports in other parts of the world.

When we see major disruptions, it really just highlights the need that ports have identified to do things better, to make those investments in capacity, but also to make investments in other ways beyond physical capacity, to provide better line of sight on what's coming and leaving through the ports.

There was a great example in Montreal, when we had an urgent need to get personal protective equipment into the country to deal with the pandemic. The port, working with different organizations locally, was able to come up with a system fairly quickly to identify where there were products that we needed to get off those ships and get out into the community so that we could do so and fight the pandemic in a timely manner.

What you've seen—and what I've seen in my two short months here—is that our ports are incredibly nimble, incredibly innovative, and very committed to working with our local stakeholders on innovative solutions like that, either to be able to respond in real time to blockages when they're occurring or, ideally, to be able to plan for them so that we can mitigate disruptions as well as possible.

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

Can you elaborate on some possible solutions to make our supply chain more efficient and more resilient?

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

I have spoken to the physical investments in capacity. When it takes longer to get containers off ships, you need a place to store those containers. That's why industrial lands are a big preoccupation of several of our ports. There's also the innovation in technology—the greater visibility of what's in our supply chains and what's coming to the ports, whether it be from sea or from land—so that we can plan to get everything moving and keep it moving in a smooth and timely manner.

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

One quick question—