International Trade committee  Thank you. I would be happy to do that. What happens is that the $300 million is divided among approximately 40 different projects in the Lower Mainland that were identified. They are typically things like grade separations to remove road-rail conflicts. In some cases those projects are allowing railways to stage longer trains closer to strategic locations.

International Trade committee  We've received $300 million in contribution funding towards about a billion dollars' worth of road and rail infrastructure in the Lower Mainland.

International Trade committee  I can answer at least part of that question. I can't speak to the production of containers, but I can speak to the availability of containers. What we saw is that when you're paying.... Your shipping line's earning $10,000 for the front-haul to North America, and you're only getting a tiny fraction of that for whatever cargo you're taking back from Canada.

International Trade committee  I'm very disappointed that your invitation was declined after that. I can't speak to the detector dogs, but I can tell you that we do work very closely with CBSA. We actually have two container inspection facilities in the Lower Mainland. We recently finished building a new inspection facility for CBSA on the Tsawwassen First Nation lands adjacent to the Deltaport complex, so there is a strong presence of CBSA in the port.

International Trade committee  First of all, yes, in terms of the trucking side of things, we do charge. We try to incentivize on-time performance. Truckers can pay for being late and terminals can pay for not getting the trucks through in a quick enough time to the terminal. For example, right now I'm just looking at the turn times inside the terminals in Vancouver.

International Trade committee  Fortunately, the time spent is decreasing quickly, but we were seeing situations of multiple container ships at anchor for long periods of time. We measure the dwell of containers on the terminal. The terminal dwell has been continuing to come down steadily. I think it's now at about four days.

International Trade committee  Ultimately it's a market-driven system, so the market will set the price. With that huge demand, that was unprecedented. If you imagine that demand continuing into the future, the market would respond and there would be more shipping capacity available and you'd probably see prices normalize.

International Trade committee  I can't speak to the effectiveness of the measures in the United States. I would just say that market intervention should be the last resort, in our view, and that the market should naturally correct most of these situations over time, as we are now seeing with shipping rates coming down and an increase in the availability of export containers for Canadian exporters.

International Trade committee  Thank you. There are some short-term and some longer-term implications. Obviously, extreme weather events will continue to happen. To the extent that infrastructure can be hardened and resilience can be built into the network, that's critical. The railways actually did an incredible job of restoring their infrastructure after the floods last year.

International Trade committee  I can speak to it in the context of the west coast, but I can't speak to it in the context of the east coast. We have seen, through the pandemic and continuing through the surge we've seen, significant increases in shipping rates for containers coming into North America, including Vancouver and the west coast of Canada.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning. My name is Duncan Wilson, and I am vice-president of environment and external affairs with the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. I am joined by my colleague David Miller, senior adviser to the executive. We are pleased to be here today to discuss issues related to the impact of container traffic on Canadian trade, which is central to the business and success of the port of Vancouver.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Julian. Where we see a lot of innovation in our sector is, frankly, in Europe. There's a tremendous amount of investment by both the European and state-level governments in terms of innovation in these sectors. There's a huge opportunity. I talked about data sharing, for example.

Finance committee  Thank you. There are two types of projects on which Bill C-69 will have a major impact. One type is those port authority-led projects, such as our proposed terminal 2 project in Delta, which is currently undergoing a CEAA panel review under CEAA 2012. Even under CEAA 2012, we are three years delayed in that process, and container capacity on the west coast of Canada will be restricted for five years.

Finance committee  Yes. The borrowing limit is set. It's a discussion between Finance Canada and Transport Canada, and obviously approved by Treasury Board.

Finance committee  We applaud the government's investment in all these other areas. What we have found, though, is there isn't something that fits squarely within where we have identified a need. We've looked at the gateway's climate footprint. We applaud and support the government's GHG reduction targets.