Mechanical problems sidetracked a planned trip to Prince Rupert by the Senate Committee on Transportation and Communications; however that doesn’t mean that the Senators don’t want to hear our stories.
While the full group will not make an attempt to investigate the offerings of the Fairview Container Port, they have plans to send a delegation to Rupert to look things over as well as make arrangements for a video conference on the topic of Prince Rupert’s place in the world of container traffic.
The Daily News had full details on the representatives of the Upper Chamber and their future plans in the Friday paper.
Senators still want to hear about port
By Leanne Ritchie
The Daily News
Friday, March 23, 2007
A committee studying federal government transport policy will not return en masse to Prince Rupert, after their flight was turned back because of transportation problems last week.
However, the committee will send some members back to visit the port as well as conduct fact-finding via video conference.
“We may be rescheduling some senators to come up but not the structured committee,” said Senator David Tkachuk, deputy chair of the federal government’s Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications.
“Perhaps we will have one or two senators, one from our side and one from the Liberal side, possible two Western senators, so the expense isn’t so bad.”
The group of a dozen senators were en route to Prince Rupert last week after spending several days holding hearings in Vancouver. However, their Air Canada flight was turned back just outside of Prince Rupert due to mechanical problems with the landing gear.
The committee is studying how federal policy impacts trade, a particularly important topic as Canada moves to build Prince Rupert and Vancouver as the Pacific Gateway to Asia.
“The federal government owns the ports, so we do have a role to play and because trade policy concerns all of us. You can have all the trade policy you want but if the infrastructure doesn’t work properly to handle it, then serious problems are created,” said Tkachuk, whose home province of Saskatchewan sends grain via container and in bulk through the Ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert.
“Trade is increasing, we are a nation that looks out onto the world to sell our product and we also import a lot of product. All of these infrastructure things are of utmost importance.”
In Vancouver, the Senate committee heard from a number of organizations.
They included organizations whose mandate involves influencing government policy to facilitate trade, including the Western Transportation Advisory Council. Both the city and port are members of this group.
“We have had no lack of interest in the subject. We feel we are getting a fairly balanced view of things and it’s helping us because we don’t have a lot of expertise in Parliament and this is giving us an opportunity to get reacquainted with a subject matter that concerns all of us,” he said.
“It concerns you of course because you have a port, it concerns me in the prairie because we send along bulk grain to ports on the West Coast and Great Lakes and, of course, because of pulse crops we are starting to use containers to ship products. This is becoming very important to everybody.”
The committee will continue with its fact-finding through the spring and hopes to present a report some time in June.
In the meantime, Tkachuk said he hopes to be one of several senators who gets to return to tour the new Fairview Container Terminal.
Due to growth in global trade and advances in technology, freight is increasingly containerized.
Container traffic between North America and Asia alone is expected to grow from 15.3 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in 2003 to 33.5 million TEUs in 2015.
By 2020, the value of this containerized trade is expected to reach $75 billion, contributing $10.5 billion to the Canadian economy each year.
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