44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 21, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join the debate today on Bill C-33, the strengthening the port system and railway safety in Canada act.
The parliamentary secretary asked a great question about how we could fix this bill once it went to committee. Being on the Standing Committee on Agriculture, the bill was very interesting to me, especially being from Saskatchewan where we are landlocked. The railways are an important mode of transportation for our commodities. It is a bit disappointing that this has missed the mark in improving the efficiency of the railway system and ports.
I will talk about agriculture for most of this speech, because it is interconnected between agriculture and our supply chains in our transportation system.
Like most of us did, I had a lot of time this summer to go around the riding and visit folks. I was able to get the member for Thornhill out to Regina this summer, and we got her on a combine. We were combining lentils just outside of Regina. We were also able to get the chief superintendent from the Depot Division, F division, on a combine as well. That day we were combining durum.
What these all have in common is that once they go from the field to the combine to the bins, the next step is to get them to the port. That is the transportation system we have in the country.
The thing that happens so often, almost like clockwork every winter, is a slowdown of the trains because they cannot pull as many cars because of the cold weather. We really need to focus on this and have more options available to get our commodities to market. We have heard this time and time again from producers across Saskatchewan and the Prairies.
I know my friend from Red Deer—Lacombe would hear many of the same complaints from producers and from the agriculture sector as a whole. They are very good at getting their yields off the field; the problem is getting them to port.
My colleague, the member for Lethbridge said it very well, that one of the aspects we were looking to strengthen is the efficiency of the port system. Not being able to load grain cars and ships in the rain in Vancouver is a substantial problem. This could have been addressed in this legislation to strengthen it.
Bill C-33 would amend seven existing laws, including the Canadian Marine Act, the Customs Act, the Canada Transportation Act, the Railway Safety Act, the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Transportation Appeal Tribunal of Canada.
My colleague from Lethbridge talked about the ever-increasing bureaucracy and red tape that was added in this current iteration of Bill C-33. We do not need more red tape when it comes to our ports. I think everyone in this chamber would agree that we have to be more efficient at transporting our goods. Canada is an exporting economy. We see that now more than ever in Saskatchewan.
We have some big players in Saskatchewan. The head office of Viterra in Saskatchewan. I talked to its CEO and he put it very clearly that we needed more efficiency at the Port of Vancouver. We did talk about this bill a little this summer when we ran into each other. He was looking forward to seeing what was in it. I had a chance to give him a call the other day and he was quite disappointed. In fact, many stakeholders have been disappointed in what this bill has provided so far.
Some of the people who were not consulted on the bill were CP Rail, the Association of Canadian Port Authorities, Canadian Marine Pilots, Western Grain Elevator Association, Port Nanaimo, Canadian Canola Growers, Global Container Terminals and the Chamber of Shipping.
One of the comments from CP Rail was that after working on this for four years that it was a whole bunch of nothing. That is one of our main stakeholders with regard to the bill. When one asks what could be done better, we could have a conversation with CP on how this bill could be improved. I hope CP Rail representatives are on the witness list when we get this to committee.
Another one of the people who could be consulted is a man from Saskatchewan, Murad Al-Katib of AGT Foods. This company transports and ships across the world. One thing he says is that getting container ships is a difficult thing to do in Canada.
What we could do is have conversations with the people on the ground who need the railway system improved. One thing I would like is to have the witness list include some of these people when this legislation comes to committee, people like Murad Al-Katib and companies like Viterra. These people have used the port system.
The Port of Vancouver is the gateway to the world for us as exporters. There are efficiencies we could improve on, obviously. Like I said earlier in my speech, we really need to be able to load grain cars in all weather. We have to do it safely, of course, but we need to be able to do it in all kinds of weather.
When we are trying to get our goods to market, in talking to the railways about the huge inefficiencies, another thing we could do is get some pipelines built. If we take some oil cars off the railways, then we would have the ability to actually ship more grain on a daily basis.
When it comes to Saskatchewan, and my colleague from Alberta agrees, there is no more efficient way to ship oil than through a pipeline. We have seen through other legislation like Bill C-69, the no-more-pipelines act, that we cannot get things built in this country.
When we talk about the overall vision for infrastructure across this country, that vision needs to include more pipelines being built to get oil from west to east. We do not have those conversations. There needs to be infrastructure debate in this chamber about how we are going to move forward into the 21st century. This also includes building pipelines. It includes the electricity grid as well, because we need to become more efficient when it comes to shipping materials across our beautiful country.
One of the other things I found very interesting is some of the amendments and the impacts they would have on the ports, such as the proposed amendment to expand Canadian port authorities' mandate over traffic management, including vessels moored or anchored. We talk about expanding the port authorities' mandate. Have we had that discussion with the port authorities? Do we know if they have the capacity to even expand that mandate? That is the question I have for the parliamentary secretary, and hopefully we can get that answered when we are in committee.
Another question I have is on enabling the development of inland terminals. Have they talked to some of the proponents that would be building and expanding these terminals and what they need to see in this legislation?
Another amendment would be to streamline the review process for port authorities' borrowing. Obviously, that is something we could have a conversation about and discuss in committee as well. On establishing new regulatory authorities to oversee Canada's marine security framework, whenever there is talk about expanding authorities, I would like to have conversations on what that means to shippers and distributers across the country.
I would also like to have the conversation about how we are going to be able to get goods then across the ocean. We talk about getting to the port. We also need more efficiency when it comes to having the ability to load ships with grain. We need to be building more capacity to ship LNG. We have had Germany and Japan come to our country and ask for help when it comes to LNG. One of the reasons we cannot do it is because we do not have the capacity to load these vessels to get the LNG to different areas of the world. That is a conversation we should be having as well.
The United States built five, six or seven LNG terminals over the last three or four years and we have built nothing. We have become a country where it is almost impossible to build infrastructure under the current government. People want to be able to invest in our country, but the goalposts keep moving on when we can actually get something built. We are then really having trouble attracting foreign investment to our country because they do not see how we would have the capacity to export.
We have lost hundreds of billions of dollars in this country over the last eight years because of investment flowing from Canada straight to the United States. This is because investors believe our infrastructure is not sufficient to be able to transport the goods they want to produce in our country.
We have a wealth of natural resources and we do not have the ability to get those resources to port and then to the destination after that. Therefore, this bill, unfortunately, misses the mark in trying to create more efficiencies at the Port of Vancouver. It misses the mark and increases our capacity on the railways. For that reason and many reasons, after reaching out to stakeholders, they do not like the bill, we do not like it either and we will be voting against it.
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Yes, Mr. Speaker, we will be bringing some of our ideas to committee, either by me, if I can sub in, or through my wonderful colleagues who are on the committee that this bill will be going to.
I appreciate the ability to add to the witness list because there are a lot of agriculture stakeholders who need to be consulted about this legislation and amendments need to be proposed to make it better. My hope is that when the witnesses and experts in the field of transportation come to committee to talk about what was missed in this bill, our colleagues from the Liberals and NDP will listen and not just shoot down their ideas.
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Mr. Speaker, many of us can have conversations about aging infrastructure in our ridings across the country. Something that has been overlooked in the last eight years is putting money into infrastructure, especially in transportation, in almost all aspects. We should have the conversation around adding more money to infrastructure.
The government is very good at wasting money on pet projects, but when it comes to putting money into infrastructure, it has failed miserably. We have seen the Asian infrastructure bank fail, we have seen the Canada Infrastructure Bank fail and not build one project. I think all of us should be able to bring forward infrastructure projects in every riding. There are 338 ridings across the country where the government could put money into something that will actually help Canadians and stop wasting money on pet projects.
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Mr. Speaker, I am so glad that the member is catching up on California law and the state of California. Our leader has been going to Timmins—James Bay so often. We are getting so much support, and there will be a Conservative member. He could actually retire in California after the next election.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's comment. Obviously he knows a lot about agriculture.
We are having huge issues getting our goods to market. I am looking forward to hearing his speech in the not-too-distant future on how we could help make sure our agricultural producers are supported and how we could help them get their goods to market.
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