Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members. Good morning.
It's a pleasure to be here this morning on behalf of the Shipping Federation of Canada, which is the national association that represents the owners, operators and agents of ocean ships that carry Canada's imports and exports to and from global markets.
Our members' ships load and unload cargo at ports across Canada. They carry everything, including containerized consumer and manufacturer goods; dry bulk commodities such as grain and iron ore; liquid bulks like crude oil and refined oil products; and project cargoes such as heavy machinery and industrial parts.
These ships, which are all ocean-going and foreign-flagged, carry virtually all of Canada's international seaborne trade. They therefore play an essential role in connecting Canada's importers and exporters to customers throughout the world.
If there is a single priority action that our members, and indeed most of Canada's supply chain stakeholders, would likely agree on, it is the need for a national supply chain strategy to guide Canada's future decisions regarding investment in trade-enabling infrastructure, which is also one of the key recommendations in the final report of the supply chain task force. Current investment decisions, including those that are part of the national trade corridors fund, are too often made in a highly piecemeal manner, with no mechanism for demonstrating how a project will contribute to the efficiency of the supply chain overall or the fluidity, and no systematic process for evaluating projects once they are operationalized.
A related issue, and one that needs to be addressed in a national strategy, is the lack of predictability, consistency and timeliness in the current process for assessing the environmental impact of specific port infrastructure projects. I would place these projects in two broad categories. The first is the replacement of aging infrastructure that may no longer be fit for purpose, and the second is the creation of new assets to meet current or future demand. Although the latter category may be more fashionable, both categories are equally important. It's essential that both types of projects receive timely review and approval when merited.
As crucial as investment in physical infrastructure is, equally important is the need to invest in digital tools and platforms that enhance the ability of stakeholders to better manage and extract value from the huge volumes of data that flow through the supply chain on a daily basis. We strongly support the supply chain task force's recommendation on the need to develop a national supply chain data and digitization strategy, which we view as the best option for making the system more efficient and competitive in a context where our ability to build physical infrastructure is increasingly constrained by a variety of factors, including lack of space, community push-back and environmental concerns.
In order to be fully effective, the primary focus of such a strategy must be on connecting existing digital platforms rather than building new ones, and ensuring that Canada's major ports play a leadership role from both a regional and a national perspective. Government departments and agencies must also be prepared to join the digitization effort, ideally by migrating to a “maritime single window” reporting model for collecting data from supply chain stakeholders.
Although this committee is focused on large port infrastructure projects, it's worth noting that the most advanced ports and terminals in the world won't generate full value for their operators or investors if supporting infrastructure like the navigational channels linked to the ports aren't appropriately dredged, if ships can't access the ports during the winter due to a lack of icebreaking resources or if there's insufficient anchorage capacity to accommodate ships awaiting their cargo. Nor will these terminals operate at full capacity if shippers hesitate to move cargo through the port due to inadequate rail or road connections, or concerns over the labour market.
As the supply chain challenges over the last few years have made all too clear, ports don't exist in isolation but are part of a larger trade and transportation ecosystem that's made up of many subsystems, all of which exist to serve the golden rule of shipping, which is that cargo is king. As king, cargo will always find the most efficient and affordable path to its destination. Once a better route becomes available, it is virtually impossible to bring that cargo back to its previous routing. This basic fact is always top of mind from an ocean shipping perspective, and something we hope will also serve as a guiding principle of this committee's deliberations.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to your questions.