Supply chains | The vulnerability of Western Canada

The floods in British Columbia are another reminder of how much eastern Canada benefits from the St. Lawrence Seaway. Due to climate change, it is urgent to optimize our logistics corridors to the west.

The footage from British Columbia last week shocked everyone: multiple casualties, dairy cows pulled to safety with their heads above water, loss of livestock in the Fraser Valley and the flow of seriously compromised goods on the rails or on the roads.

Many have now argued that unexpected floods and atmospheric rivers in British Columbia are becoming increasingly likely. But western supply chains have always shown great vulnerability and that won’t change anytime soon.

In the East, the public has often placed little emphasis on supply chains. Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces have taken advantage of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Easy access to goods makes us forget the logistical genius of the seaway. Food from Europe, the Middle East and beyond has arrived by ship via the Seaway for decades, serving our nation’s founding provinces at an affordable price. In a global economy centered on Europe, it made sense to rely on Halifax and Montreal.

In contrast, in the west of the country, business with Asia has only grown over the years. The Port of Vancouver sees more than $ 12 billion in goods and agri-food products entering and leaving the country each year. Nearly 35 million dollars of goods pass through this vast port complex. The port is located near a region where approximately half of the planet lives.

In the fall, prairie-grown staples head to Asia, which is why the floods couldn’t come at a worse time for our western farmers.

In addition, the poor crop of 2021 has resulted in fewer quantities to sell, and much of this produce is now stranded on trains somewhere in the Rockies. Hopefully the situation will resolve itself quickly.

A “seaway” in the West

In the West, the idea of ​​building the equivalent of a seaway has been an issue for a long time, since the creation of our nation, but especially for the last 20 or 30 years. Failure to build new gateways and better corridors has made our western agrifood economy more vulnerable, especially with climate change. As a result, with the globalization of trade, this vulnerability is now becoming more palpable. Floods in the West remind us that even the slightest natural disaster can create major bottlenecks throughout the supply chain.

Given the topography of the region, it will become difficult to develop new options and strengthen the resilience of the supply chain. Trade through the United States is obviously an alternative, but bureaucratic compliances and protocols are still complicated with our neighbors to the south.

Basically we need to secure the few options we have across the Rockies to Vancouver or Prince Rupert, now the third busiest port in Canada, after Vancouver and Montreal.

Maintaining and securing these roads will require significant investments. Unfortunately, this should have been done years ago.

Beyond trade, the situation in British Columbia will generate problems of access to food in the region. We will see shortages in some foods, either because the production of products like milk, eggs and poultry has been severely hampered for some time, or because the products cannot enter the Vancouver area. Remember, the Fraser Valley is the province’s “agri-food technology park”.

For the rest of Canada, we expect sporadic shortages of produce that would have come from Vancouver, but nothing to bring Canadian markets closer to food insecurity.

Climate skeptics will tirelessly argue that weird and extreme weather events have been happening for centuries. With last summer’s heat dome and wildfires and recent flooding, skeptics are just not paying attention. The real backbone of our agrifood system is our supply chain and we need to take care of it.

Citizens do not see any part of the supply chain and cannot interact with it. This abstract concept, invisible to all of us, works and will always continue to work. You have to have faith that everything will be better. For governments, however, faith will not be enough to take care of our logistics network in the West.