Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to begin by acknowledging that I'm joining you from the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe peoples. Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to meet with you today as part of your study on the state of Cana

Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm happy to respond. There's a lot involved, as mentioned in your laundry list, which is one of the reasons that we've been calling, and supporting the calls of others, for a national supply chain strategy. Key to that is identifying, nurturing and promoti

Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for your question, Mr. Badawey. A lot of what you've asked about is in the report you referenced last week, which was done by the committee in 2019. There's a lot in there that's certainly worth looking at. I'll speak to a couple of areas. On fi

Transport committee  I would say that it is absolutely in line with the objectives of the program. The program is trying to meet many needs. With $880 million going into projects for our ports, I would say that our ports are being recognized by the program. Certainly, anything that can improve supply

Transport committee  Absolutely.

Transport committee  Thank you for the question. I will respond in English if you do not mind. The answer is really all of the above. There are investments needed in physical ports' capacity, and ports are pursuing those in a variety of ways. There's also technology and innovation. Canada's port

Transport committee  I think one of the reasons why we are calling for a national strategy on the supply chain, and marine components within that, is that there are so many stakeholders in our communities who have an interest in the outcome of where we go with our investments. There's so much riding

Transport committee  Particularly for large projects, our ports today have borrowing limits that are set in letters patent. My understanding is that the process for changing that is very time-consuming and lengthy. One approach would be to improve that process. An alternative is to move away from ar

Transport committee  Thank you for the question. It is an interesting one. From my perspective, two months in, there seem to be a few. One would be the risk of delaying getting the capacity that is needed for the near future and the long term. Infrastructure investments do not happen overnight, part

Transport committee  Mr. Dekovic had some great comments on what's going on specific to Vancouver. I'd encourage you to meet with Vancouver in terms of what they're looking at. I know that in addition to their work on the longer-term capacity concerns, they have some immediate concerns around the con

Transport committee  I can start to answer that question.

Transport committee  I will proceed in English. I don't feel I can speak to what specifically was happening in Vancouver. I think the biggest lesson we can take away from that, however, is that we do need to plan for more events like this. I know the word that's been used a lot here is “resiliency”.

Transport committee  I have to say, given that I started in February, I'm really not the best person to weigh in on that, because I was not there. At the time, I was facing challenges with our airports. I could testify on that, but that's not what we're here for today. Really, I wouldn't feel comfo

Transport committee  My understanding is that our ports have actually managed much better than could have been expected, and certainly better than other ports in other parts of the world. When we see major disruptions, it really just highlights the need that ports have identified to do things bette

Transport committee  I have spoken to the physical investments in capacity. When it takes longer to get containers off ships, you need a place to store those containers. That's why industrial lands are a big preoccupation of several of our ports. There's also the innovation in technology—the greater