Agriculture committee  I think the one thing about interchanging and the recommendation of the supply chain task force is that it's really focused on the movement of goods into the United States and Mexico. That doesn't address the global food insecurity issue. It certainly reduces costs, because now you're talking about having options of using different carriers, rather than being locked into the rail carrier that serves you.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the committee, for the invitation to participate in today's meeting. I'm Mark Hemmes, the president of Quorum Corporation, based in Edmonton. Quorum has been responsible for monitoring the Canadian prairie grain handling and transportation system on behalf of Transport Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada since June 2001.

International Trade committee  I would refer him to figure 3 in the document I presented. It gives you the numbers on how much empty container movement there was out of the Port of Vancouver.

International Trade committee  I think you have to go to the shipping lines.

International Trade committee  I did a quick calculation. It's about 346,000 TEUs a year for grain alone.

International Trade committee  I'm certainly not a person who could answer a question on creating legislation, but because those stipulations already exist in the Canada Transportation Act and the Canada Grain Act, I can't see a reason why you couldn't extend them to containers as well, whether it's through the Transportation Act, the Grain Act or the Marine Act.

International Trade committee  I can't speak to the rate issue, but I know that rates have been fluctuating and are coming down now, from what I'm told by the shippers I speak to. I think the biggest difference is probably in the level of competition. You have so many more ports with much more capacity in the United States, plus a population that is 10 times greater than that of Canada.

International Trade committee  I would hearken back to the comment about the Port of Vancouver being the third-worst port. I don't think we have that bad a system right now, especially on the port side. It was a victim—I hate to use that word—of the circumstances of the time. It was probably, in fact, a very efficient port, but because of the backlog, the pandemic and all the things that happened, the whole west coast of North America was inundated with containers in a fashion that we've never seen or experienced before.

International Trade committee  I would point out that right now, they are probably crating the trains in Los Angeles and Long Beach very close to the dock. However, what Burlington Northern is planning to do—they've announced this, and I think they will do it and it will be in place in the next two years—is take them far away from the dock to what equates to an inland terminal, much the same as what Murad has created in the city of Regina.

International Trade committee  The report he's referring to was done by the World Bank and it was published in January and February. It had a timeline of what was going on in 2021. That's why I say that it's not exactly fair to judge the longer-term efficiency of those ports based on what happened in 2021, because they were going through the pandemic.

International Trade committee  Very quickly, I agree with what Murad had to say. I would also point to the fact that in just the last couple of days, the supply chain task force released their report. If you haven't read it, I would encourage you to read it, because they were pretty broad in what they looked at, and I think a lot of the ideas they put forward in there would address a lot of the process-type issues.

International Trade committee  I have to answer in English. My apologies.

International Trade committee  It's interesting. I can only speak from the grain industry perspective for Montreal, but whereas we saw these huge decreases in the amount of export traffic through Vancouver and Prince Rupert, we stayed pretty much even through the Port of Montreal. That effect of having to rush empties out through the west coast wasn't nearly as severe in the Port of Montreal.

International Trade committee  I think just about every city in Canada as well as the United States has had to make room for empty containers, because there isn't the capacity to move them in or, for that matter, bring in product that's loaded. They're just trying to get the cycle back into a synchronous move.

International Trade committee  Yes, there is an issue. Truckers have had a long-standing issue trying to hire people in the industry. They have a big bubble that's starting to get to the age of retirement. They're in a challenging time. On the other hand, what happened with railways—and one in particular—was that when the pandemic hit and the volumes decreased, and then again with the smaller crop last year, they laid off a lot of people.