International Trade committee  To an earlier comment about how the Port of Vancouver and the west coast Canadian ports don't have to compete with anyone, I would like to remind all the members of the container port performance index, a global ranking of container ports across the world. Vancouver ranks 347th,

International Trade committee  Thank you for that, Madam Chair. To quickly finish that thought, if every shipper moved away from Canadian ports, there would be no jobs at Canadian ports, just to put that in context. To the member's specific question about any type of disruption, whether it be rail, our borde

International Trade committee  I think the federal government could make changes to the Canada Labour Code and add additional tools to the tool box when it comes to these types of labour disruptions. The idea would be that the federal Minister of Labour, or the federal cabinet, could impose binding arbitration

International Trade committee  When you look at Canada's competitiveness overall, we need to look at other countries and how countries that have better competitiveness markers deal with their unions and their businesses and how they operate. As Mr. Kingston mentioned, there's always a path. Whether it's rero

International Trade committee  We just like to see consistency. I think there was great federal leadership for the Port of Montreal strike that happened just a year prior. There was one day of strike action, and Parliament passed back-to-work legislation and made sure that the port was functioning and that the

International Trade committee  Sure. There's a high level of wheat, canola, fuel, canola oil and wood from Alberta going out through west coast ports. Those are the big, main exports. They're all in the billions of dollars. I know it's said a lot that Canada has a reputation as a reliable shipper. A lot of t

International Trade committee  Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I apologize to you and all of the committee members for the technical issues this morning. I do welcome the opportunity to share insights on behalf of Alberta's government with regard to the strike at the west coast ports—Canada's number one, larg

International Trade committee  Thank you. I'll just say that back in 2022, 18 billion dollars' worth of Alberta exports were shipped from west coast ports, and that includes everything from grains, minerals and forest products, through Vancouver and Prince Rupert. Most products were bound for Japan, China, t