Transport Committee on April 25th, 2022

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

I think that instead it is actually I.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Oh.

Ms. Gladu, the floor is yours.

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

I'm going to start with Monsieur Labbé. We've heard that the various rail companies are reinvesting a huge percentage into infrastructure, but if I look to even small communities like mine in Sarnia—Lambton, we're even having difficulty maintaining the existing infrastructure.

The federal government has provided millions—but not billions—in terms of studying and everything, but it looks to me like we need some kind of major investment and co-operation and leveraging of money in order to grow, to do the Quebec-Windsor corridor and to address resiliency in our supply chain.

Can you comment on what we really need from a capital priority point of view and how much you think that will be?

[Sébastien Labbé]

As you said, the railroads invest a lot of money in the infrastructure to maintain fluidity and resiliency and increase capacity. As Mr. Brazeau said at the start, it's to the tune of 20% to 25% of the revenues that are put back into capex, which is quite significant, and it is always based on, like I said, ensuring we stay ahead of the demand. We try to always be before the capacity crunch comes in....

As it relates to the amount of money required in that specific area, I can't speak to it. I cannot speak to that, but we're always open to working with our customers and supply chain partners to create synergies and projects that will benefit the transportation of goods.

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

Yes, I think these are nation-building projects and, really, to get to the next level of competitiveness, we absolutely have to partner between the federal government and all of our rail partners.

Monsieur Montpetit, you have spoken about the problems with the trucker shortage. I know that this was made worse by the vaccine mandates that were put in place in Canada. President Biden actually exempted truckers who were alone in their trucks, or companies that had less than a hundred employees. I wonder if you think it would have been good, considering that Canada had negotiated as part of the road map that Prime Minister Trudeau would match what was happening in the States, and that he should have negotiated that reciprocity to at least help the situation with the trucker shortage.

[David Montpetit]

I think the trucker shortage is a much bigger picture than that. If you look across the country right now, you will see that a lot of provinces are impacted by that shortage, but more specifically Ontario, B.C. and Alberta. You have truckers retiring, you have truckers leaving the workforce after all of what we've experienced, including what you've outlined, and you have people not entering the workforce.

One of the studies I saw when we had the B.C. Trucking Association present at one of my meetings here back in February was...we have probably a shortage of 25,000 drivers across the country—if not more at this point. So, it's a much bigger picture than just a COVID-specific problem. It has been an ongoing issue, and it continues to grow. We don't seem to have any solutions right now for it.

I think there's a focus on it, and from what I understand the government and the feds have taken some initiative around it in conjunction with the provinces, but it is an overall workforce problem that we have. It's no different from some of the other ones like maybe the railways and some of my members are facing also, but the percentages seem to be much higher within the trucking industry.

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

Absolutely. Certainly this is not the time to have 10% to 20% of people unable to work when everyone who has had vaccines, or not, and can get and transmit COVID, so I think there is an opportunity there.

Mr. Dagenais, with regard to the Montreal ports, we had heard that with all the growth in export markets that it would be a good idea for us to expand the number of international ports that we would have. Do you agree with that? Do you think that the experience from the Montreal port could be used to help do that?

[Daniel Dagenais]

I think the ports play a role, sometimes even a complementary role to each other. Definitely, having a network of ports to service our Canadian exporters is absolutely necessary. I am unclear whether we actually need more ports per se. We already have 17 port authorities all across Canada, as you probably already heard from other testimony, so we already have a large number.

We certainly need, in certain aspects and in certain regions, more infrastructure; hence, our answer in our expansion project in Contrecoeur, in order to meet that demand in due time. As Monsieur Montpetit mentioned earlier, I believe, infrastructure is a long lead-time process, whether it's to get financing, approvals, authorization, and then eventually building it out and commissioning it. So, those are long-view issues and certainly long-view projects.

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

What specific infrastructure would you build?

[Daniel Dagenais]

Here in Montreal?

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

Yes.

[Daniel Dagenais]

For us, we're building an additional container terminal, because we believe that we're going to be running out of vacancy in the next few years. As I mentioned in my testimony, aside from building additional infrastructure, we're not building what we used to build 20 or 30 years ago. We are building the 21st century type of infrastructure; hence, shore power-equipped terminals that can handle trucks that require to be connected to our power grid.

We recently signed an agreement to create a green corridor; hence, having LNG as a source of power for ships, but also ammonia or methanol. So greening our equipment and making sure that it's more resilient to climate change is absolutely necessary for the next generation of equipment.

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

Excellent. Thank you so much.

I think that's my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. Gladu.

Next we have Mr. Rogers. You have five minutes. The floor is now yours.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our panellists today. It's been very interesting to hear you identify, I guess, the major causes of supply chain issues across the country.

When we talk about all the issues identified with fires in B.C. and western Canada, floods and extreme cold, and the national and international picture, we hear people talk about supply chain issues caused by COVID.

I guess this is a very simple, basic question for any of you who would like to speak on this. Assuming we were living in a world where COVID had not existed for the past two years, would we have the same supply chain issues?

Maybe Mr. Brazeau and Mr. Montpetit or others can comment on that.

[Marc Brazeau]

You have the microphone, David. I'll follow you with pleasure.

[David Montpetit]

All right. That sounds good.

That's a good question. I do believe if you took COVID out of the picture, we would still be in a situation very similar to the one we are in now. There may be a supply chain imbalance. We would maybe have less of an imbalance than we're seeing right now as well as some of the effects of that. But if you look at the climate piece, if you look at a lot of the disruptions we have already experienced here in the last two and a half years between blockades, climate, labour disruptions, etc., those are most likely all going to happen whether or not there is COVID. Hence, as I outlined before, the issues we have seen started well before COVID, and they're going to be here well after COVID. That's my perspective.

[Marc Brazeau]

Thank you, Mr. Rogers, for the question. I would agree with David. In fact, the rail blockades occurred prior to COVID, and we saw the resulting effects of the blockades for weeks on end.

We have learned some great lessons from COVID, and there can be lessons that will help improve the supply chain going forward. I mentioned the relaxing of some of the regulatory issues. The regulatory release we had was very helpful and was very important, because in the case of railways, we were considered essential services. We continued to run from day one of COVID, but we had to make some adjustments. All the railway companies made some adjustments, but the federal government also stepped up and provided some regulatory relief. So I would say that it goes well beyond COVID, but there are some lessons to be learned from COVID that could carry us forward and maybe improve the supply chain going forward as well.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thanks so much. I appreciate those comments.

Mr. Montpetit, you talked about a supply chain review. What's been done in the last five to ten years, particularly in your jurisdiction, to resolve supply chain issues, and have these attempted solutions improved the situation at all?

[David Montpetit]

In the west and specifically out of Vancouver, some work has been done in the last, I'd say, five to seven years. Some of it has been successful. I think anything we do to contribute financially, with national trade corridor funding and so on, will definitely help. Every little bit helps. The question is where we're spending the money and whether we are getting the best bang for the buck, for lack of a better word.

Just to circle back to the earlier comments, I think managing a scorecard, as far as how we're doing with the funding, would be important to see. I saw an update a while back. I think it was back in December actually, on where we are for approved projects versus completed projects and the timelines for those. Some of them are much quicker—we could call those low-hanging fruit—and a lot of them are major infrastructure changes that need to happen.

I think we've made some good steps out here, but I do believe there is still a lot of work to be done. On top of it all, we had the fire and flood situation, which just made things more challenging but also opened our eyes to what we need to do not now but in the next 50 years to actually manage something like this again.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Mr. Chair, I have another quick question. Maybe Ms. Hardy or Mr. Labbé could comment on this.

Has the rising price of oil and gas affected the supply chain for you, and, if so, how?

[Joan Hardy]

Thank you for that question, Mr. Rogers. Fuel obviously represents a significant cost for us at the railway, so it does have an impact on our business and on our customers' shipments for sure. We're watching it very closely and doing our best to protect ourselves and our customers from the rising costs that are associated with fuel.

[Sébastien Labbé]

I'd make the same comment as Joan.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thanks so much.

Mr. Chair, how are we with time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Rogers. You have six seconds left, so you were perfect on time there, and I very much appreciate that.

Mr. Barsalou‑Duval, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.