International Trade committee  I can start. I believe your understanding of the 40-foot situation in Prince Rupert is not correct. Prince Rupert can handle 40-foot containers, but we did see a very significant increase in the number of empty containers that were being shipped back, not only directly from the

International Trade committee  In our business, going to the U.S. would cost us more, even with the higher rates. It's not an option to do that. It would cost us more to off-load trucks than it would to continue to go through Canada. One thing Mark said is that we always have a tendency to beat up on the rail

International Trade committee  I think you have to go to infrastructure.

International Trade committee  We are one of the largest container users in the country. Our Canadian business ships in the range of 25,000 to 35,000 containers per year. Again, that's probably among the largest 10 users in the whole country. From our perspective, though, we've had to recreate our supply chai

International Trade committee  Could I add one thing? If the containers don't come into Canada, we don't have a chance to use them on the way back out. The more efficient we get in our ports.... We need the U.S. volume of consumer goods to drive the availability of containers in Canada. Our population is too s

International Trade committee  I could give a perspective to start. I want to make this gloomy Friday afternoon a little lighter. As I look out my window to our container terminal, I note that I haven't seen this many containers in Regina in the last two years. Equipment supply is loosening and our steamship

International Trade committee  The bottom line is that the productive capacity of Canada is growing in every sector, whether it's the resource sector or the manufacturing and value-added sectors. Containerization is needed. Our agriculture sector, as an example, is not based on bulk vessels any longer. That's

International Trade committee  Mr. Masse, I would say that very key, in my mind, is an analysis of the infrastructure gap we have. Again, land and apron space at the ports are at a great premium. We need to ensure that we have infrastructure inland to handle containers and intermodal. As Mr. Hemmes mentioned

International Trade committee  I would add that in our case, if we hadn't had the Port of Montreal, we would have been in big trouble. We took containers that were destined to go back west, reversed course and took them east. On the export side, we serviced Europe, North Africa and the Middle East from Montrea

International Trade committee  Ancillary charges are massive parts of our cost base. With the disruption in the supply chain and pricing variability, all of those ancillary charges also went up dramatically. The ancillary charges are now at a point where sometimes they're as much as what we used to pay for con

International Trade committee  I think we should look at all of the issues that play out on top of each other. There's one thing we have to be very clear on, Terry. We have to ensure that we have the infrastructure that suits the business model of the steamship lines too. For instance, in Regina, we at AGT sp

International Trade committee  I would say that competition regulation should probably not be done by a multilateral agency. However, the overall collaboration we're seeing between the U.S., the U.K., Canada, New Zealand and Australia is an interesting approach. The one thing we have to recognize is the steam

International Trade committee  Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to participate. Canada, with a specific focus on western Canada, has been blessed with a significant agricultural endowment, with some of the best and most productive agricultural lands in the world, making Canada a world leader in agricul

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Absolutely. Listen, I'd invite anyone to go to our Arctic Gateway Facebook page, where you can track all the washout repairs. We're using what we call “geotextile tough cell material”. This is a new technology that is actually reinforcing railbeds. Up to three triple layers of ge

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  From my perspective, you know I mentioned the effects of climate change and how that is changing the dynamic of ice thickness and what that will mean in terms of deploying icebreakers, but there's no doubt that the effects of climate change are being seen on the Arctic. I've be