Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
The Western Grain Elevator Association is a national association of grain companies. We handle in excess of 90% of Canada's bulk grain shipments. Today, I'll highlight our views and observations on Bill C-33 in the context of the grain supply chain.
Alongside the lead-up to Bill C-33, as was pointed out in the earlier session, the supply chain task force report was tabled in October of 2022.
The task force report refers extensively to Canada's competitiveness and prosperity, the need to create a competitive transportation system and the need to address the power imbalance between transportation service providers and shippers. It rightly positions shippers and exporters as drivers of the national economy and places the needs of those who produce and sell Canada's resources as paramount.
It's the WGEA's observation that the spirit of Bill C-33 is in stark contrast to that of the task force report. We have some examples.
The first area of inconsistency is port governance. The federal government has the objective of increasing the volume of Canadian agricultural exports and is investing in infrastructure projects that help increase the flow of goods. At the same time, in the last 11 years, grain farmers in western Canada have grown nine of the largest crops on record, mostly through innovation. This is a good news story for Canada.
We have, however, seen past decisions by port authorities that were not in the grain sector's best interest. This led to our organization's advocating for changes to port governance to provide more representation for tenants and the provincial economies where the product has originated.
I feel like we're losing focus and sight on the fact that ports are there for the national economy, first and foremost.
Instead, Bill C-33 does the exact opposite. It increases representation from local municipalities and the provinces in which the ports are located. It raises a real concern for us that port operations are going to be governed by local issues rather than the national interest.
The second suite of concerns has to do with vessel management. With a growing crop, we face the challenge of evolving the supply chain to move more product each year. This is not a situation of trying to find ways to do more with less. In practical terms, we need to find a way to have more vessels ready to load in the port of Vancouver, not less. It's Canada's largest working port designed for commerce, and it has to be—first and foremost—viewed through that lens.
Bill C-33 will enable the creation of a regulated system to restrict the presence of vessels in Canada's ports. A natural consequence of increasing trade is an increase in vessel activity. As a country, it doesn't work to have conflicting objectives of growing exports but reducing the presence of vessels to move exported product.
A major contributor to increased days at anchor is the ongoing challenge for the railways to deliver enough trains on time and in the appropriate sequence. Some of those things are outside the railway's control and some of them are within, but Bill C-33 only addresses the symptoms of vessel numbers and vessel wait times while ignoring the root cause of inadequate, unpredictable and often poorly executed rail service.
I heard the minister speak earlier and say that the bill addresses end-to-end supply chain issues and needs to be looked at in the fullness of the supply chain, but we don't see that in the bill. If the government intends on passing legislation to help supply chains, it really has to look primarily at railcar supply from the railways versus railcar demand from exporters, on a week-to-week basis, and introduce legislation that provides discipline that matches railcar supply with demand. Vessels wait for railcars to arrive. That's why they're waiting in Vancouver. It's not because of poor management by grain exporters.
Demand for Canada's exports must be set by customers, not by the railways. Bill C-33 not only ignores this root cause but will regulate vessel activity to match limitations already in place due to the rail environment. Instead of liberating supply chains to operate commercially, we see this as restricting vessel activity to match the restrictions already in place in the rail sector.
The third suite of areas has to do with appeals and dispute resolution.
Bill C-33 falls short in establishing dispute resolution processes that are typical of legislation where a similar imbalance of power exists, as we find between ports and their tenants. It should include a straightforward means for tenants to appeal unfair or unreasonable decisions of a port authority. There are mechanisms in other sectors where the same scenario exists, but they're not there for the marine sector.
In addition, Bill C-33 should address the obvious conflicts of interest that arise in a port's dual role as a developer and a regulator. This is a topic on which the bill is silent.
I just have a few more comments. The fourth area—