Mr. Chair, I am thankful for the opportunity to rise tonight to speak in support of Canada's forestry sector.
This important sector, as we know, employs nearly 200,000 Canadians. It relies on efficient, reliable and cost-effective transportation supply chains, from trucks and railways to ports, to move its products to domestic and global markets.
The Forest Products Association of Canada reports that the last five years have, unfortunately, highlighted the fragility of Canada's freight transportation network, which has been affected by bottlenecks, accidents and frequent labour disruptions. Tonight, I would like to address the matter of the fragility of our transportation network, particularly as it relates to the forestry sector, the softwood lumber dispute and trucks transporting forest products that rely on dangerous sections of the Trans-Canada Highway in Ontario.
First, I will give a bit of contextual information. The average overland distance travelled by a forest product shipment is roughly 1,200 kilometres, with most sawmills and paper mills being in, as all my colleagues know, remote, rural and northern regions. About half of this is by rail to the United States and to seaports for offshore exports, and the other half is by truck.
When rail service falters due to congestion, crew shortages or strikes, trucking can only partially backstop the gap. It takes approximately three trucks to replace every boxcar of pulp and paper or four trucks for every centre beam of lumber and wood products. If rail service were to cease entirely, as it did briefly in 2024 due to simultaneous work stoppages at CN and CPKC, the sector would require additional trucks far beyond its trucking capacity to supply. Nonetheless, this did happen in 2024, and it highlighted the importance of trucks and our roads to bring forest products to market.
In northern Ontario, that would be along the more than 3,000 kilometres of the Trans-Canada Highway, which includes Highway 11 and Highway 17. Unfortunately, these segments of the Trans-Canada Highway are just about the only remaining sections of the highway that are two-lane highways, and so all trucks travelling from east to west, from southern Ontario to eastern Canada or western Canada as they connect from Quebec to Manitoba or from Manitoba to Quebec, must do so along dangerous two-lane highways. This creates serious national-level vulnerabilities. I will explain why, specifically for the forestry sector.
Between January and September 2025, just to give an example in my area, the North Bay to Cochrane section of the Trans-Canada in northeastern Ontario experienced the equivalent of 32 days without any movement of people or goods. If we extrapolate that to the year's end, that is 40 days when no trucks, no people and no cars could move along the highways. Basically, the MTO in Ontario is projecting that by 2030, trucks will represent almost 50% of the traffic along the roads. These are not regional numbers; these are national supply chain numbers. Basically, that is why, in Ontario, all of the municipal associations in northern Ontario are calling for widening the highways in northern Ontario in support of the forestry sector.
Although the safety and reliability of highways in Ontario falls partly under provincial jurisdiction, I nevertheless wanted to raise this issue here tonight, because it is an important factor affecting the competitiveness and resilience of our national forestry sector. Furthermore, the safety and reliability of supply chains in northern Ontario and across Canada and the softwood lumber dispute are not separate issues. I conclude that they are one and the same issue that ensures the strength of the Canadian economy.
In closing, I would like to commend our government on its work to defend forestry businesses and workers that are affected by U.S. tariffs. I am very proud to be part of a government that will always defend the interests and do what is best for Canadians and the Canadian economy.