44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 8, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I would like to note that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Langley—Aldergrove.
It is always an honour to rise in the House, and today, to speak to Bill C-33, the strengthening the port system and railway safety in Canada act. That is just the short title. It is a bill that would amend seven existing acts of Parliament, but for a bill that does so, it would accomplish very little.
Although I believe in the importance of improving the security of Canada’s transportation system and that urgent action is needed to fix our supply chain issues, this bill falls incredibly far short in achieving either of those goals. The reality is this bill is all optics and no results. It is typical Liberal legislation. It is a box-ticking exercise that creates the illusion that something is being done about a problem that the government has ignored for too long. We know that foresight, planning, operational excellence and managerial competence are not in the Liberal government’s wheelhouse.
Actually, it is worse than that. This bill would increase red tape and regulatory burdens, forcing more costs to be downloaded to consumers. In these inflationary times, that is the last thing Canadians can afford. It would choke the tenants and users of our ports and stymie what should be a drive for efficiency and international competitiveness, while failing to address the root causes of the supply chain congestion. It fails to establish that decisions made by the ports must be in the best interests of the supply chain and the national economy.
More government is not the answer. This is not looking to the best ports in the world, which are gateways to their continents and countries and are significant economic drivers for their regions. The Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the country of my heritage, is the largest in Europe; it is the gateway to Europe, and it is hailed as the smartest port in the world. Rather than learning from experts and taking a serious look at what Canada could do differently, we are stuck at the bottom again. How is it that the Port of Vancouver, our main gateway to and from Asia, ranks 368th in efficiency out of 370 ports around the world? It is the third worst in the world. How did we get here?
In 2017 and 2018, Transport Canada initiated two separate reviews with the goal of determining the necessary steps that would address supply chain issues and help avoid them in the future. That was five or six years ago. The best the Liberals could come up with is a bill that is a bunch of nothing. What a missed opportunity.
What about the Liberals' own supply chain task force? Did they listen to the supply chain stakeholders and transportation experts they assembled? The world reached a supply chain crisis two years ago, and it was brewing before that. For a government that is good at convening, it convened. It brought together government and industry, logistics specialists, shippers, producers, transporters, manufacturers and more. They were good, smart people; let us give some credit for that. However, did the government listen to them? The task force even produced a fancy report with a colourful cover; it was called “Action. Collaboration. Transformation.” The title cleverly spelled out the acronym “ACT”, but it did not act. In its introductory line, the national supply chain task force report stated, “Canada’s transportation supply chain is nearing its breaking point.” How do we fix this? How could we “ACT”? What action could the government take now and into the future to fix it?
On pages 34 and 35 of the report are meat of the answers. There are summary tables in a Gantt chart format that list 13 immediate response actions and eight long-term strategic actions.
The minister welcomed this report with much fanfare. That was on October 6, which is over eight months ago. What has happened since? How many of those 13 immediate, meaning now, and eight strategic recommended actions does Bill C-33 address? Does it address a handful or any at all? The answer is zero. We are talking about shipping Canadian goods, our trade, the lifeblood of our economy.
Eight months later, there are no immediate actions, none of which would actually be required to be legislated. How is it that none of those are done?
Urgent action is needed to address the worsening supply chain congestion, but we also need to get to the root causes of supply chain congestion. The strategic recommendations would go a long way to, if members will pardon the pun, turn this ship around, but they are nowhere to be found in Bill C-33.
How else is Bill C-33 flawed? I will go back to the red tape burden. There would be new reporting requirements that would reduce the efficiency, effectiveness and competitiveness of Canadian ports. They would be a particular burden on smaller ports, which cannot be ignored for their critical role in moving goods in the country, fuelling our trade corridors and driving economic activity.
Where else does Bill C-33 fall down? It would not resolve the lack of financial flexibility our ports need. How do they compete with the best in the world and how do they modernize when they are prevented from accessing the private sector funds needed to make investments and grow? We visited as a transport committee the Port of St. John's, and it has a borrowing capacity of $4 million. That is effectively maybe one house in the greater Vancouver area, and maybe two in the GTA. It is a small amount. This is preventing the port from growing, and other ports are facing similar challenges.
On rail safety, Bill C-33 would really only make modest changes that reflect existing practices. That is it. After all these years, there is nothing. What is a new offence for interfering and tampering with rail lines going to accomplish, when the police already have the authority to act on that? It is not a problem of authority; it is a lack of enforcement. The other changes to modernize our rail system that should have been considered in Bill C-33 are, again, a missed opportunity.
One last point is that the bill would also give a tremendous amount of new power to the Minister of Transport. It would be more government and more red tape, and unfortunately, in the case of that minister, he is one who does not act quickly, if at all, as we saw in the holiday travel chaos in our airports in December and January.
I am sure members can understand my skepticism.
Canada's ports, airports and railways are a federal responsibility, and they are in an absolutely miserable state. A small but recent example of a Liberal government policy that is stymying our transportation corridors and supply chains is the rolling truck age program. For some unfathomable reason, authorities were looking to ban perfectly legal trucks from picking up cargo in the Port of Vancouver for the sin of being 12 years old or older, because trucks moving fewer goods is somehow going to help the congestion. The good news is that the pressure worked and the program was postponed for a third time until at least next year, and hopefully forever.
Our ports need better than Bill C-33. Our railways need better; our shippers need better; our supply chains need better; our economy needs better; and Conservatives stand ready to deliver. Members can imagine a competent government that takes serious action on these burgeoning problems, removes the gatekeepers, gets our ports back on track and fixes our airports. If this bill is the best the government can come up with after eight years in office, it is time for it to step aside and let Conservatives fix the mess and unleash Canada's great potential for everyone.
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Mr. Speaker, I guess the member was not listening.
None of the concerns she just raised would actually be addressed by Bill C-33. No one, other than my colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable, has actually spoken more about safety. I was on the transportation committee when we introduced the rail safety report that was referred to in debate. This piece of legislation was actually the first report as I joined the committee, and it had started in the previous Parliament. None of those recommendations have been acted upon in this legislation. The supply chain task force started in January 2022. It had a report on October 6, 2022, eight months ago, with 13 immediate recommendations, the first of which was to deal with port congestion. None of those have happened. It is a big failure of the government.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree that my colleague from Hamilton Centre and I have a good working relationship and have had many conversations, in fact, recently at the Hamilton port on the transport committee's tour.
As I referred to in the answer to the previous question, the very first report that was done when I joined the transport committee was on rail safety, and fatigue management was an important part of that study. We heard from witnesses on that, yet none of those recommendations are reflected at all in Bill C-33, which has been pointed out by others in debate.
What is added in terms of red tape are more officers, more advisory committees, stuff that is not going to actually address any of those root problems.
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- Jun/8/23 10:16:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as I have referenced, there are 13 immediate recommendations and eight more longer-term actions of the supply chain task force that have so far been ignored. We heard about the borrowing capacity of ports as the transport committee toured all of our major ports throughout the middle of March. There are those two things, as well as a host of other things, and we could learn from the examples of places like Rotterdam, Antwerp and Seattle that do much better jobs than we do here.
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