Transport Committee on May 2nd, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 15 of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, January 31, 2022, the committee is meeting to study the state of Canada's supply chain.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House Order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

Per the directive of the Board of Internal Economy on March 10, 2022, all those attending the meeting in person must wear a mask, except for members who are at their place during proceedings.

I will take a moment to make a few comments for the benefit of our members and our witnesses.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike and please mute yourself when you are not speaking.

For interpretation, those of you who are on Zoom have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either “floor”, “English” or “French”. Those of you who are in the room can use the earpiece and select the desired channel. As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair.

For members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can, and we appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.

Members, appearing before the committee today we have, from the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, Mr. Brian Kingston, president and chief executive officer; from General Motors of Canada Limited, Mr. David W. Paterson, vice-president, corporate and environmental affairs; from Global Automakers of Canada, Mr. David Adams, president and chief executive officer; from Lion Electric, Mr. Patrick Gervais, vice-president, marketing and communications; from the Prince Rupert Port Authority, Mr. Ken Veldman, vice-president, public affairs and sustainability; and from Sysco Canada, Mr. Randy White, president.

Welcome back, Mr. White.

As well, from the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, we have Mr. Greg Rogge, director of land operations, and Mr. David Miller, who is appearing in person today and is senior advisor to the executive director.

We wish now to begin the opening remarks with the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association for five minutes. The floor is now yours.

[Brian Kingston, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association]

Good morning.

Mr. Chair and honourable members, thank you for the invitation to appear here today as part of the committee's important study about the state of Canada's supply chain.

The Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association is the industry association representing Canada's leading manufacturers of light- and heavy-duty motor vehicles. Our membership includes Ford Motor Company of Canada, General Motors of Canada Company and Stellantis FCA Canada.

Canada's automotive industry was responsible for over $13 billion in annual economic activity, 117,000 direct jobs and an additional 371,000 jobs in aftermarket services and dealership networks in 2020. The industry is Canada's second-largest export sector, with $36.5 billion in exports in 2021.

CVMA members are leading a new wave of automotive investment in Canada. Over the past two years, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis have announced $11.5 billion in investment, which will create over 6,000 direct jobs and tens of thousands throughout the auto supply chain. Most of this new investment is dedicated to electric vehicle assembly and the battery supply chain.

Canada's domestic auto industry is competitive as part of the highly integrated North American market. Every day, vehicles, parts and components are shipped across the continent as part of the assembly process. To make this happen, companies invest millions in complex logistical plans that rely on scheduled, uninterrupted delivery to and from the plants. Any delay can impact production and potentially shut down a line, which costs millions of dollars and puts jobs at risk.

Supply chain challenges continue to be a major headwind facing the industry, slowing the return to pre-COVID North American production and sales levels. First-quarter vehicle sales are down 12.7% from last year. North American auto production is expected to reach 15.2 million units in 2022, which is one million units short of pre-COVID production.

These supply chain challenges are driven by semiconductor shortages, COVID outbreaks, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the recent blockade of the Ambassador Bridge, to name a few. While some of these challenges are outside of Canada's control, the blockade at the Ambassador Bridge exposed weaknesses in our trade infrastructure that should be addressed to make the supply chain more resilient.

The Ambassador Bridge blockade closed a critical commercial border crossing that is responsible for approximately one-third of all Canada-U.S. trade. Almost 7,000 trucks cross each day, and a significant portion of these are tied to the auto industry.

Due to the blockades, automotive companies on both sides of the border undertook extraordinary measures and cost burdens to deal with the sudden trade diversion. Some plants were forced to cease production. Company contingency planning efforts were impacted by a lack of communication and coordination among local, provincial and federal levels of government. Companies were challenged to find an appropriate point of contact that could provide oversight and direction to support decision-making. In the absence of a clear response plan, CVMA had to take the extraordinary step of supporting an injunction against the protesters. The injunction was successful and ultimately led to enforcement action to clear the blockade.

Canada needs to do more to support a safe and reliable trade infrastructure to make the supply chain more resilient as part of the integrated North American auto market. Failing to act now could impact our competitiveness for existing and future investment.

With that, we recommend five things for your consideration today.

First, identify a clear federal lead to provide guidance and direction when there is any threat to cross-border movement of commercial goods. This person or entity should have the authority to coordinate with other levels of government and counterparts in the U.S. to ensure decisions are made quickly and disruptions are dealt with swiftly.

Second, reinforce efforts to complete the Gordie Howe International Bridge and access to it via the construction of direct access from Ontario's Highway 401 to prevent future disturbances.

Third, increase border service agent staffing to ensure all lanes are consistently open at high-volume ports of entry. This should be accompanied by investments in training opportunities for border staff to support improved consistency and interpretation of bulletins or regulatory changes.

Fourth, enhance marine port infrastructure to facilitate vehicle loading and unloading, support the supply chain and ensure our domestic industry can reap the benefits from Canada's trade agreements.

Fifth, ensure that any new customs administrative processes that are introduced take into consideration the lead times necessary to make complex customs system updates and mitigate any undue cost increases or administrative burden that would impact the competitiveness of businesses.

Thank you so much for your time today. I would be pleased to answer any questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Kingston.

Next, from General Motors of Canada Limited, we have Mr. Paterson.

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

[David Paterson, Vice-President, Corporate and Environmental Affairs, General Motors of Canada Limited]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for the invitation to speak with the committee and for your interest in our story at General Motors Canada.

As you may be aware, GM Canada is making large investments in Canada with the reopening of our Oshawa plant and the transformation of our plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, to be Canada’s first full-scale electric vehicle manufacturing operation, starting later this year.

We have grown to more than 1,000 engineers doing R and D, software and technology testing in Canada, and significantly we recently announced a half-billion-dollar investment in Quebec with a joint venture partner. We will build a factory to process cathode active materials from critical minerals needed for our General Motors Ultium EV battery supply chain in North America.

At GM we not only depend on well-functioning supply chains; we are often the purchasing customer at the top of the chain. As you study supply chains, it is often useful to follow the money.

At GM, our supply chains are much more than containers moving parts to our factories on boats, trains and trucks. In the auto sector, supply chains are global. Our supply chains have not only been disrupted by COVID pandemics, wars, the effects of climate change, sanctions and disruptions at the Canadian border, as Brian has mentioned; they have also been impacted by the new CUSMA agreement, or USMCA; by other regulatory changes; and by changing technology. The wider shift from a goods-based economy to a digital or intangibles economy also has impacts that policy-makers need to understand.

I would like to offer a few initial thoughts.

First, it may be human nature to focus on the problems in supply chains. I think, however, that the disruptions that we faced in the past few years are actually far less remarkable than the supply chain solutions that have been found to keep things moving. Supply chains are about infrastructure, logistics and technology, but mostly they are about people solving problems.

For example, when the pandemic hit, General Motors was able to quickly leverage our expertise and our supply chain partners to quickly make ventilators at scale to save lives, and here in Canada, we quickly secured a medical manufacturing licence at the Oshawa auto plant and made 10 million medical masks for first responders across Canada. When semiconductor chips were scarce or when bridges were blocked at the border in Windsor, the solutions to keep our factories working were, frankly, remarkable.

My point is that there is amazing capability and resilience in our supply chains and the people who run them. If we work together with the private sector to learn, prepare and adjust, we can remain competitive.

A second thing I encourage you to consider is that supply chains are changing as our products and services change. General Motors is rapidly shifting to electric vehicles and self-driving vehicles. This has led us to re-examine our traditional supply chain approaches to now take a more integrated hands-on approach, including new partnerships and investments.

Part of our electric vehicle strategy has been to own our own battery technology, branded Ultium, as we innovate to reduce costs and benefit our customers. As we ramp up to make millions of electric vehicle batteries, we want to be purposeful in building a sustainable EV supply chain in North America, including critical minerals, processing and battery systems development.

This presents a generational opportunity for Canada with its distinct abundance of key minerals and our very good fortune, since the 1960s, to have our auto sector fully integrated into the North American market. As the new EV market grows, we in Canada have the opportunity to not only mine and move critical minerals; we should also process them, recycle them, and purposefully develop the technology and intellectual property all around them so that we're no longer Harold Innis’ hewers of wood and drawers of water.

As I noted, we are very excited to be back manufacturing in Quebec, where we plan to begin processing materials for EV batteries by the start of 2025.

In this regard, we welcome the budget’s $3.8-billion critical minerals plan. Now the challenge will be to think carefully not just about how to best to spend that money; we must also follow the money and the market. If Canada and the United States are to be the best of integrated EV supply chain partners, we will need to align our approaches to regulation and supply chain resilience.

Supply chains, therefore, are not just a challenge. They are a generational economic and environmental opportunity, but we will need to get the policy framework right.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Paterson.

Next, from Global Automakers of Canada, we have Mr. Adams.

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

[David Adams, President and Chief Executive Officer, Global Automakers of Canada]

Thank you very much. On behalf of the 15 members of the Global Automakers of Canada, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today.

Our members include Canada's largest automaker, Toyota, which last year produced more vehicles than Ford, GM and Stellantis combined, and Honda, Canada's second-largest automaker, in addition to 13 exclusive Canadian distributors of their brands in our country.

Last year our members represented 62% of all vehicle sales in Canada and 65% of all light-duty vehicle production in Canada. While our members have traditionally been characterized as importers, approximately 56% of the vehicles that are sold by our members in Canada are produced in the traditional CUSMA-USMCA region.

As a result of the composition of our membership and where they produce vehicles and ship from, they have significant experience with supply chain infrastructure by truck and rail, running both north and south in the NAFTA region, east and west across Canada and with the port authorities on the east coast and the west coast, as well as the Port of Montreal.

Suffice it to say that there have always been long-standing infrastructure issues within Canada that need to be continually monitored, addressed and modernized if we, as a trading nation, wish to continue to create a hospitable environment for foreign direct investment in our country. Substantive efforts at federal and provincial levels to attract investments to Canada can be undermined by infrastructure that is congested and at times lacks the reliability and predictability that investors seek to ensure they can secure the necessary production inputs into their facilities as well as get finished goods to market.

I think it is important for the committee to note that, perhaps like other industries, Canada's supply chain infrastructure issues may be somewhat masked by the impact of the pandemic over the course of the past couple of years.

For instance, automobile production in Canada fell 28% in 2020 from 2019 levels, and 2021 production was down fully 33.5% from 2019 levels. Likewise, vehicle sales in Canada fell 20% in 2020 from 2019 levels and were still down 14% last year from 2019 levels. The automotive manufacturers in Canada export roughly 85% of what is built here and, conversely, Canada imports about 85% of what is sold here.

These substantially lower shipping volumes over the past two years suggest that existing challenges will be amplified as both production and sales volumes return to more traditional levels. The return to more traditional levels of both production and sales is expected to happen at a very modest pace, however, owing to the ongoing shortage of semiconductor chips, which has resulted in lost vehicle production globally of about 12 million units.

This lack of vehicle production has resulted in low inventories of new vehicles for the past two years, which has had the secondary impact of higher prices for new vehicles and subsequently for used vehicles as well.

Increasingly, our supply chain challenges are not related simply to things like port congestion or rail strikes, but can also be tied to the challenges around our changing climate, where fires and flooding compromise or destroy key pieces of rail, road and port infrastructure that are not often quickly or easily rebuilt.

Our members have also been working with their supply chain partners to ensure higher throughput of electric vehicles at port facilities through the installation of charging stations and other modifications, as well as railcars equipped to transport these vehicles.

In this regard, as our industry transitions to zero-emission vehicles, we were pleased to see the announcement of the clean growth fund in last month's federal budget, with a commitment to restructuring critical supply chains, as well as $1.5 billion allocated under the critical minerals strategy for infrastructure to support the development of a critical mineral supply chain that will be essential to maximizing Canada's resources and opportunities to become a critical component globally of materials and minerals necessary for the development of electrified vehicles.

I wish to thank the committee again for the opportunity to appear before you today. I would be pleased to answer any questions you have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Adams.

Our next speaker is Patrick Gervais from Lion Electric.

Mr. Gervais, you have the floor.

You have five minutes.

[Patrick Gervais, Vice-President, Marketing and Communications, Lion Electric]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee.

As you may know, Lion Electric is the leader in electrification of transportation. We're an OEM and we build medium- and heavy-duty all-electric trucks and buses. Every day, we help make Canada one of the cleanest economies in the world and help the country reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course, financial incentives and strong policies are essential when we want to develop a new sector, such as the electrification of transportation, just as it is necessary to be ambitious to achieve our objectives. However, none of this will have a real local economic impact if our businesses are disadvantaged compared to our American, Asian and European neighbours. There is no need to tell you that the competition is fierce for the Canadian flagships.

We believe it is essential to advocate the creation of a strong Canadian supply chain not only in the electrification of transport but for all other manufacturing activity, a complete ecosystem from natural resources to the production of finished product and all the way to recycling. All of this needs to include local purchases.

We as Canadians have always distinguished ourselves with innovation. A strong Canadian supply chain will continue developing our cutting-edge expertise to serve generations to come and create really well-paid jobs.

We're asking to develop regulations that require assembly in Canada in RFPs, and financial assistance programs. This is currently what every country in the world is doing in developing policies to encourage the local economy. It is quite normal for governments to encourage their domestic businesses and the creation of jobs in their territory, especially when it comes to the development of a whole new economy like the electrification of transportation. We need to abolish the lowest-bidder policy. The lowest bidder is an innovation killer.

Without a strong signal from the Government of Canada on assembly in Canada, local companies will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage compared to foreign companies. We have also seen the impact of the pandemic. It is important that as a country, we become more independent and more vertically integrated.

The electrification of transportation alone can have a major effect on the creation of a new, growing green economy. Through innovative public policies, the Canadian market for zero-emission vehicles could grow from a value of $1 billion in GDP and the creation of 10,000 jobs in 2015 to a value of more than $150 billion in GDP and the creation of millions of jobs by 2040.

These changes will improve our energy security and positively impact the return on investments that electric fleets will experience through less maintenance, a longer life cycle and lower maintenance costs.

Building our supply chain is also a solution to fighting climate change. Transportation is one of the biggest GHG emitters, and working with local companies means less transportation and net GHG emissions.

Let's put the odds on our side and start building a strong Canadian supply chain, because we are already behind.

Thank you. I will be happy to answer any of your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much.

Next, from the Prince Rupert Port Authority, we have Mr. Ken Veldman.

The floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[Ken Veldman, Vice-President, Public Affairs & Sustainability, Prince Rupert Port Authority]

Good morning from the traditional territory of the Tsimshian people on the north coast of British Columbia.

As many of you will know, the Prince Rupert Port Authority is responsible for the overall planning, development, marketing and management of commercial port facilities within the Port of Prince Rupert. We're proudly Canada's third-largest port, and growing. We currently have over $2 billion in our advance project portfolio, either under construction or nearing the end of environmental assessments and final investment decisions.

The Prince Rupert gateway is a strategic trade corridor for Canada, and it continues to facilitate critical international market access for western Canadian exports and ensure the direct connection for consumer imports destined throughout Canada and the United States. Currently, the port facilitates these exports and imports through six primary terminals that provide intermodal, dry bulk and liquid bulk capacities and handle diverse commodities, including consumer goods, manufacturing inputs, biorenewable and transitional energy, forestry, and petrochemical and agricultural goods, to name just a few.

Building upon the natural advantages of Prince Rupert, including being the closest west coast port to Indo-Pacific markets, the port has continued to grow and diversify our cargo volumes, unlock private sector investments in new infrastructure capacity and add value to Canadian trade. The port has handled approximately $60 billion in trade value annually and supports over 6,000 gateway operation jobs throughout northern B.C., resulting in over $500 million in annual wages and $145 million in annual government revenue contributions.

Our growth and success have been thanks to our strong relationships and collaboration with local community and indigenous partners. Local indigenous residents, indigenous governments and indigenous-owned businesses have participated significantly in the economic opportunities presented by growth and expansion of the Prince Rupert gateway. Our long-term sustainable growth is directly correlated to the continued collaboration and participation of our indigenous partners.

We've witnessed major climate change events impacting communities and domestic supply chains in southern B.C., the ongoing impacts of COVID, supply chain and market disruptions and global conflict. As disruptions will continue to occur, we need to ensure that Canada has reliable and resilient supply chains to ensure the free movement of Canadian exports so that communities across the country can better manage economic and social challenges that flow from those disruptions.

To build greater resiliency, we must work to have greater redundancy in our west coast supply chains, ensuring that both major gateways, Prince Rupert and Vancouver, can provide Canada with enhanced trade capacity and logistics capabilities as disruptions occur.

The recent global conflict in Ukraine has highlighted Canada's need to support global partners. As Indo-Pacific and western European nations are looking globally for new sources of energy, Canada needs to expand energy export capacity to provide our global partners with access to clean, responsible Canadian energy. Prince Rupert's connectivity to western Canadian energy production centres and ongoing support for low-carbon energy trade to those markets make Prince Rupert a logical focus for growth of critical energy export infrastructure.

As the committee undertakes this important work on ensuring the strengthening of our supply chain capacity and resiliency, I leave you with these recommendations:

One, we need to ensure we are developing not just new terminal capacity, but just as importantly, logistics and transloading capabilities that provide more value, competitiveness and flexibility for Canadian trade. In Prince Rupert, this is a strategic focus for us, and we have been working to finalize major export and import transloading services through the Ridley Island export logistics project.

Two, to support and achieve the international market transition to renewable energy and provide global partners with access to Canadian energy, a focus on enhancing export capacity is necessary. Prince Rupert has become a leader in energy transition, thanks to the development of Canada's only west coast LPG export terminals, and we're looking to expand on this success with the development of the Vopak Pacific Canada terminal.

Three, to meet Canada's current and future supply chain demands, we need to have more transparent and efficient regulatory processes that ensure appropriate and timely decisions are made on vital trade infrastructure. Delays in regulatory processes have hindered the development of port projects that would have provided much-needed supply chain relief.

To be clear, we're not advocating less robust review, but more timely, more certain and more transparent processes.

Thank you once again for the invitation to appear today to discuss the important role that the Port of Prince Rupert continues to have in Canada's supply chain and trade agenda. I look forward to answering your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Veldman.

Next, from the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, we have Mr. Greg Rogge and Mr. David Miller.

Gentlemen, you have the floor. You have five minutes.

[David Miller, Senior Advisor to the Executive, Vancouver Fraser Port Authority]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is David Miller. I'm senior adviser to the executive at the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. I'm joined from Vancouver by my colleague Greg Rogge, director of land operations.

It's our pleasure to be here today to provide the port authority's perspective to your review of issues facing Canada's supply chains.

As a Canada port authority, we're federally mandated to enable trade through the Port of Vancouver while protecting the environment and considering local communities.

The Port of Vancouver is Canada's largest and most diversified port. We're about equal in size to the next five largest ports combined. The port handles the most diversified mix of cargo of all North American ports.

In 2021, despite the ongoing pandemic and global supply chain challenges as well as the extreme weather events in B.C., cargo volumes through the port increased by one per cent over the previous year. Also, 2021 saw record container volume for the fifth consecutive year, and despite the severe drought on the Prairies, record volumes in the first half of the year meant we still had the second-highest volume of grain exports in history.

While we continue to deal with challenges and unpredictability across the supply chain, the port is operating efficiently, and we've been able to weather the storm better than many ports around the world. We were also very pleased that in April we were able to welcome cruise ships back to the port after a two-year absence.

Our port has been a major beneficiary of the national trade corridors fund and its predecessor programs. By working together with our customers, the terminal operators, railways, trucking companies, municipalities and indigenous groups, we've been able to set priorities and access significant funding to address bottlenecks, thereby improving the capacity, efficiency and safety of our supply chains. The government funds have unlocked billions more in private sector investment in new and existing terminals and rail and highway corridors.

The past two years have highlighted a number of supply chain vulnerabilities that require action.

First, we've seen how the acute industrial land shortage in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland is constraining Canada's core supply chains. That's been brought into focus as Canadian exporters of containerized goods have faced challenges in accessing the empty containers that they needed in order to export goods. The container issues are globally based but have been exacerbated by our region's land challenges.

A second point I would emphasize is the importance of data sharing among all the supply chain players. We're leading the data-sharing and analysis project in the gateway program and need the co-operation of all port users to ensure its success.

The most consequential vulnerability we're facing is that Canada's west coast is on track to run out of container terminal capacity as early as the mid-2020s. If that happens, as a country we're staring at a future of prolonged supply chain congestion. It also means a loss of trade sovereignty, with greater reliance on U.S. ports for Canada's market access. Effectively, we'll see a repeat of the supply chain challenges Canadians are experiencing today due to global factors, except those challenges will return as a made-in-Canada problem.

There are currently four container terminals at the Port of Vancouver: two in the inner harbour, one in the Fraser River and one at Roberts Bank. Roberts Bank is of particular importance. With container ships continuing to grow in size, the largest ships cannot pass under the Lions Gate Bridge to reach the inner harbour and are able to access only Roberts Bank Terminal.

For more than 10 years, the Port of Vancouver has been focused on the solution to this capacity challenge, with strong support from our indigenous partners. The port authority is leading the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project, which we've designed under our public interest mandate, leveraging our deep experience in building sustainable infrastructure to meet Canada's needs and ensure capacity and competition for Canadian importers and exporters. This project will be built on the same basis as previous major projects at the port, including the existing terminal at Roberts Bank. The port authority will build the terminal and lease it to a terminal operator, with the lease covering the cost of construction.

In anticipation of this project, significant gateway and private sector funding has already gone into a number of road and rail projects specifically focused on building grade separations and new roads to mitigate the impact of increased traffic on the communities along the rail corridor to Roberts Bank.

This is a critical project for Canada and Canadians, and we're hopeful for a positive decision this year.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear today. We look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Miller.

To kick off our round of questioning today, we have Ms. Lantsman.

Ms. Lantsman, the floor is yours. You have six minutes.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for joining, and some for rejoining, given our that our committee was cut short last time. I appreciate it.

On that note, Mr. White, I want to give you the opportunity. We finished last with your comments in the last committee. You talked about some of the operations you have in the U.S., which basically help run food supply for emergency disaster relief in many states. You essentially have warehouses of trucks ready in case of a hurricane.

I want you to remark a little bit not just on getting food or key supplies across that border, but also on some of the bottlenecks you faced, such as the border regulations and the red tape.

Could you expand on that and perhaps provide a suggestion to the committee about how we can alleviate some of that?

[Randy White, President, Sysco Canada]

Thank you. I'll be brief.

I appreciate the opportunity to come back today after Friday's abrupt closure of the meeting.

On the topic and the question asked, across the U.S., Canada and parts of Europe we represent the food service distribution logistics business, supplying food products to the food-away-from-home industries that we all enjoy, whether it's restaurants or hotels, as well as health care locations and whatnot.

In particular to this question, we faced challenges a few times recently due to extreme wildfires and flooding in Alberta and British Columbia. The challenges we faced and suggestions related to access into and out of the U.S. of North American food products in order to serve British Columbia more effectively in a crisis were highlighted.

As we think about the challenges and the recent appointment of a minister of crisis management, the recommendation is to look at ways to work in co-operation with the U.S. border and the U.S. government to expedite decisions on opening and allowing the free movement of food and emergency goods into and out of our countries in a crisis. This is the topic we bring to the table as being important.

We don't have suggestions on how to build second and third rail lines and highways into and out of British Columbia. That's the real problem that exists. That's why we have this challenge today. It comes back to allowing a swift and efficient opening and closure of border access.

We found that during the most recent challenges—the floods in British Columbia—the Canadian government was very supportive of conversations for working through border access into and out of Canada to allow support for B.C., but the pandemic challenges at the same time created the red tape that prevented us from moving into and out of the province swiftly.

Food needs to move by the hour, not by the month. Especially in a crisis, in getting food to hospitals and locations in dire situations in British Columbia, we were hindered by these challenges. That's—

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

I actually have a follow-up, Mr. White, if you will allow it. I think you meant the Minister of Emergency Preparedness—

[Randy White]

Yes, that's the one.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

—although I suspect that someone has called him the “Minister of Emergencies” in crises.

In terms of your discussions, were they had with the Minister of Public Safety, the Minister of Emergency Preparedness or CBSA? More broadly, were you talking to a number of different people and not getting anywhere? I'm trying to understand what the bottleneck was in getting the decision you needed in order to move food quickly across the border.

[Randy White]

It was all of the above. There was no concerted, co-operative, organized discussion, we'll call it—no central control point to help us and many other industries work through this.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you very much, and thanks for coming back to committee.

Since we have Mr. Miller here from the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, what would be the single biggest bottleneck the port faces? I know you went through some of them in terms of COVID and unavailable containers and rail lines. If you could pinpoint one or two issues that we can look into further, what would they be?

[David Miller]

Frankly, right now the biggest challenge is inconsistency and unpredictability. That's particularly problematic in terms of container shipping. That's normally the most predictable. Those are ships that normally run on a schedule. You know when they are arriving and you know where they going. The challenge now, particularly with some of the lockdowns that have taken place in China and the things that have happened previously, is that you're just not sure when things are going to arrive, and that leads to a level of congestion that is problematic. That causes ripple effects right through the whole supply chain.

At the moment, or over the months since our progressive recovery from the natural disasters, that has really been the biggest single challenge.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

It seems that disasters and COVID are not once-in-a-lifetime events anymore. They are becoming consistent events.

Is there now any planning or resiliency from the port authority's perspective to see these more as regular events rather than as events to plan for? Is there any planning within your risk management planning that encompasses seeing these events as regular events?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Unfortunately, we're going to have to wait for the next round to hear the response to that question. Thank you very much, Ms. Lantsman.

Next we have Ms. Koutrakis. Ms. Koutrakis, the floor is yours. You have six minutes.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses for appearing here today and for your excellent testimony.

I would like to go back to something that Mr. Kingston said in his testimony with regard to the Ambassador Bridge.

Some are saying that the Ambassador Bridge blockade was not significant since overall trade did not seem to go down compared to last year. Can you comment on this from your members' perspective?

[Brian Kingston]

I'm absolutely happy to, and thank you for the question.

I have seen commentary to that effect, but the facts are clear when you look at the automotive industry. Significant costs were incurred by companies to come up with solutions to work around the Ambassador Bridge. We saw shipments being routed to the Blue Water Bridge, for example. Ultimately, we did see production shutdowns on both sides of the border, which had an immediate impact on jobs. Volumes did go down in the auto industry with respect to shipping. There was a job impact and there was a cost impact.

I also note that comparing the data this year to the data last year really isn't an adequate comparison. We're in a unique environment right now because of all of the supply chain challenges related to COVID. Overall trade volumes are down quite significantly from pre-COVID levels.

I don't think those comparisons are adequate. I can assure you the impact was serious and significant.