Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is David Miller. I'm senior adviser to the executive at the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. I'm joined from Vancouver by my colleague Greg Rogge, director of land operations. It's our pleasure to be here today to provide the port authority's persp

Transport committee  Frankly, right now the biggest challenge is inconsistency and unpredictability. That's particularly problematic in terms of container shipping. That's normally the most predictable. Those are ships that normally run on a schedule. You know when they are arriving and you know wher

Transport committee  My colleague Mr. Rogge may want to add to this as well. We have what we think is a pretty good mix. We have terminals that are partially automated. We think it's worked out quite well. We have a good relationship with our unions and we have a model that we think is quite succes

Transport committee  There's no question that it's been a real challenge. I spoke about the new terminal we're hoping to build. We've been in the environmental review process for nine years. Even if we get approval this year, we'll require several more permits, and then it's a six-year construction

Transport committee  Greg, do you want to take that?

Transport committee  The panel that reviewed the project and reviewed the science was quite positive that with the proper conditions, this project could in fact go ahead without causing that sort of damage. The most recent intervention by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans indicated that they wer

Transport committee  Thanks very much. I regret this, because obviously Mr. Stewart is the appropriate person, as the vice-president of infrastructure, to deal with a lot of these issues. I will do my best to deal with questions, recognizing that some of them may be beyond my areas of expertise. Th

Transport committee  First, I want to say that there is no reason, particularly, to believe that this will be an automated terminal. We don't even know who the operator will be at this point. The business seems to be going to partially automated terminals, where there are still a significant number o

Transport committee  Certainly. The suggestion that a decision has been made, somewhere, that this will be an automated port is just not true. That is not a message we have been sending. It's not something we know, at this point. It's just not accurate. We are in a position to put out a tender for an

Transport committee  We obviously have an extremely diverse port. There aren't many ports in the world that handle as wide a variety of commodities and products as we do. There could be instances in which that could make a difference, but generally speaking cargo flows to a port for a reason, whethe

Transport committee  We currently have in place a pretty extensive system of consultation committees with the local municipalities, with first nations and with residents in the area. We really already have in place most of what Bill C-33 envisions. I think what they envision is a challenge for some

Transport committee  We really haven't had difficulty. The reality is, we haven't tried. A process was begun, and when it became clear...when we had the ministerial information request and it was clear that the process was going to drag on significantly longer than we anticipated, we didn't see a p

Transport committee  We went through a very extensive review process, and there was a fairly high level of comfort from the review panel in terms of what's being done to accommodate both salmon and resident killer whales. In terms of biofilm, there was one question about which they felt they did not

Transport committee  We certainly have some concerns with the governance provisions. We feel the system has worked well. We don't understand why the minister has been given the ability to appoint the chair. It's quite important that the board have confidence in and be comfortable with the chair. The

Transport committee  There's no question. The goods have to go somewhere, and if there isn't capacity in our ports, they will flow south of the border if there is capacity there. Generally speaking, particularly in terms of containers, they are significantly more expensive. I'm told it's about $500 p