Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here.
We had certainly hoped that Minister Rodriguez would be available to lead us off on this study of Bill C-33. We understand he's coming much later. Unfortunately, he's not here to lead off the discussion, but we appreciate the officials' being here.
Obviously, our concern with the bill is that it appears to—and it does—increase Ottawa's influence in the port system, specifically with the minister's appointment of the chair, which used to be done by the board of directors at the ports. That's now been taken over by the minister, so it's a bit of an “Ottawa knows best” attitude here.
Part of the concern I have heard from port users, port authorities and others impacted by this legislation has to do with the made-in-Ottawa solutions. It's a solution in search of a problem, to be quite honest. I'm sure we'll get into that more as we debate this and propose amendments and critiques over the next number of meetings.
I want to specifically get into some of the issues at the port of Vancouver. One primary issue that has been raised, or an issue that has become an increasing concern, is the lack of available anchorages for marine vessels coming into and going out of the port to safely anchor and wait for their turn to load or unload. They use anchorages and because of backups in the supply chain, they're using some anchorages that haven't been used all that often over the last number of decades.
This bill really does provide, in my view, an opportunity to shut down some of those anchorages. As we're expanding port capacity and looking to increase vessel traffic to improve economic outcomes for Canadians and to improve on the supply chain, this bill provides a mechanism to shut down anchorages. This is kind of like building a bigger shopping mall and reducing the parking lot. That's how it's been described to me.
Why does Bill C-33 provide for more gatekeepers to shut down more anchorages when, in fact, we need every anchorage that's available? Some are suggesting we need even more.