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Member of Parliament

Jeremy Patzer

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Cypress Hills—Grasslands
  • Saskatchewan
  • Voting Attendance: 67%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $112,746.42

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 209 - Jun/8/23
Mr. Jeremy Patzer (Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC)
  • Jun/8/23 11:34:28 p.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill C-33 
Mr. Speaker, it is great to have such a lively audience here tonight in the chamber just past 11:30 p.m. It is fantastic to have a lively House of Commons. I really appreciate it. We are here to talk about strengthening the port system and railway safety in Canada act, Bill C-33. This bill is important to me. The reason is that Saskatchewan, the province where I am from, is completely landlocked. We need our ports. We need railway access. Those are two hugely important fundamentals to the province of Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan, in 2022, had over $81 billion in gross domestic product for this country. That is a fantastic output and a fantastic number. Saskatchewan does a fantastic job. It definitely punches above its weight, especially for a province that has roughly 1.2 million people. We do a great job. Obviously, agriculture and the energy sector are the main drivers of the economy where I am from. I want to talk more about the agriculture side. In Saskatchewan, particularly southwest Saskatchewan, where I am from, we grow the vast majority of the pulse crops that the world relies upon, particularly the lentil crop. It is exported all over the world. Whether someone is growing organic crops or otherwise, we grow what the world wants and what the world needs. The only way we can get those lentils around the world to all the countries that have such a high demand for them and for the protein they provide is through rail. When I look through this bill, I see it is trying to do some things around safety. It is trying to do some very important things around modernizing our ports. It is trying to strengthen our ports. If we look at where our ports rank across the world, we see that we are right at the bottom. I am sure my colleague from Provencher, with whom I will be splitting my time, will want to touch on that later, so I will be sure to leave a few points for him to get to as well. Access to ports and access to rail are so important. We have CN, we have CP and we have some really fantastic short-line rail operators. Our short-line operators are actually leading the charge on safety in the railway system. In fact, one of the owners of one of the railway companies reached out to me recently to send me an email regarding some of the statistics that the short-line operators have in Saskatchewan around safety. There are zero incidents, month over month. There are zero incidents. They are running a high-quality rail line, taking care of their employees, providing great jobs and providing a service to the farmers, the producers and the shippers in Saskatchewan, and they are doing so while respecting the safety of the workers and providing high-quality service. That is what they are doing. The email I got was from the Great Sandhills Railway. Our Saskatchewan caucus recently met with Great Western Rail, another fantastic short-line operator in our region that does a fantastic job of providing that service to farmers. It does so safely, while providing the fantastic jobs that are required to be able to meet that demand. I was just messaging one of the exporters in my riding. They export farm equipment around the world. They export to 28 countries across the world. It is a farm implement dealership in a small town in Saskatchewan. It ships to 28 countries. How does it do that? It ships through the ports in Halifax, Montreal, Vancouver and, I believe, Prince Rupert. Earlier today I heard my colleague from British Columbia talking about what the port of Prince Rupert actually means. It is the closest port to the Asian markets. The ports in Halifax and Montreal are some of the ports in North America that are closest to the European markets. They are very important access points. One of the issues that they are dealing with in Vancouver is that it takes 12 days to get a container through. Montreal is closer to 10 days, and in Halifax, it takes 14 days to get a container through. Sometimes they are waiting over a month to even get a container. Trying to get access to the things they need to ship their products is not being addressed by this bill. There is mention in the bill about setting up advisory panels and empowering the minister to set up authorities to deal with a variety of issues. However, the one thing that is not included as one of the issues that they would deal with is the actual production of the ports and making sure that they are getting results for producers and shippers. The bill would not require rail companies to make sure that they are providing the fullest service to shippers. For example, CN does not do any business with Hapag-Lloyd. When we are sitting in Saskatchewan watching a train go past one of the many intersections that we have, we see Hapag-Lloyd's name on many containers. It is one of the more popular company names that we see going across Saskatchewan when we see sea cans going down the rail lines or on a flatbed truck, but CN does not deal with it. How is that going to work for exporters in a landlocked province trying to export products? They also have to import pieces so they can build the product they are trying to make and then export. However, one of the biggest players, CN does not even deal with it, and there are other companies CN does not deal with as well. This is severely limiting the options for people trying to export a product, but the bill does not deal with that. These advisory panels that the government is looking to set up would not deal with that. It is not a priority for this government. When we hear other colleagues talking about the bill needing to be withdrawn and strengthened, and that the government needs to do more, I would suggest that these are some of the things that need to be looked at in the bill. Why is it not a priority for the government to try to make sure that we get the best result for our exporters who do such a fantastic job? All across this country, we care about the environment, reducing emissions and reducing greenhouse gases. We do that all across this country and across party lines; everybody cares about that. We have innovators in the prairie provinces that make world-class products, and they do so in a manner that is environmentally sustainable. These are products that people in the rest of the world need. If they had the technology, if they had the products that our farmers in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta have, they would be able to reduce their emissions as they harvest their crops in other regions of the world. They need what Canada has to offer, and without a robust port system, without a robust rail line, that cannot happen. I see that one of the advisory panels would actually deal with climate change, but do members think that it would bring this element of it up? No, not a chance. This will not be part of what the panel would talk about. My hope is that the government, if it is going to appoint these advisory panels, will actually talk to the shippers, exporters and manufacturing companies; the people who are trying to get their far superior products out to the world market. The government should talk to them when it is talking about how it is going to achieve some of the things that these boards are going to do. It should make sure that there are actually people in industry, who are involved in taking real and meaningful actions on these boards to make sure that we can actually get things done in a timely manner, to benefit our country and the rest of the world, and do so in a sustainable manner. That is the power that a robust rail line and port system could have in this country, because Canada has what the world needs and wants. We grow the products, we manufacture the goods and we export them. Some of those things have to get refined and brought back yet again, which is crazy; we could do much of that here in Canada. However, in order to do any of that, regardless of where we are at, we need a robust rail and shipping system, and we do not have that, but we could. We have had a trans-Canada rail line for over 100 years. It has been around for a very long time. It was a huge marvel to get that project done. However, we still have not reached the full potential that a valuable resource like that could have. We need to utilize it. The bill before us should be strengthening and building that up. It should be focused on lifting the entire country up so that we can use those ports, especially for landlocked provinces. We have not just what the world wants, but we have what our country needs, if we could even just get our goods out to the provinces and out to the edges. We have what is needed. I hope that the government will take these considerations to look at the bill and make a serious version of it so that we can actually accomplish what needs to be addressed.
1612 words
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