Canada's Biggest Port All Backed Up


A port is really just a dock. It's a place where cargo is transferred from a ship to a rail car or a flatbed truck for delivery to a waiting customer at some inland destination.

Right now the Port of Vancouver is a mess.  With both rail and road systems down or sharply constricted, cargo is backing up.

The port has experienced blockages before - usually due to labour action by dock workers or truckers.  Ships gather in English Bay. Others wait it out in sheltered areas on Vancouver Island.

On Sunday morning, there was a backlog of 54 ships at anchorage, up from 40 on Nov. 19, according to data from the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. The vessels included nine container ships in and around the Port of Vancouver, another 13 waiting to fill up with coal and 16 with grain.

The transportation chaos that has ensued serves as a cautionary tale, with industry experts saying Canada’s supply chain is tenuous and that it will likely take months, not weeks, to recover from the lingering effects of the pandemic and now the floods.

On Nov. 24, Deltaport finally saw trains trickling in again, but the rail traffic is far less than normal. Highway access for trucks is either plagued with delays or still blocked. This past weekend, sections of three highways were closed as a precaution because of heavy rainfall.

Freight trucks driving in from industrial storage locations need to return empty containers to docks. Thousands of empty containers have piled up at industrial sites and docks in the Vancouver region. Deltaport, however, can’t quickly load those empties onto ships because the terminal’s three berths are tied up by vessels that are already delayed.

Deltaport and other terminals had managed to stay “fluid” during most of the pandemic, moving freight despite all the challenges. But in a sign of the chaotic times, instead of waiting for containers to be loaded with Canadian goods, shipping companies are paying to send them to Asia empty so they can be filled faster for the return trip to Canada. For every two containers arriving from overseas this year, one is sent back empty.

The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority believes more industrial land is needed to store containers away from docks to help reduce bottlenecks and spur Canadian exports.

At the Deltaport site, which covers 85 hectares, Canada’s largest container terminal has been a shadow of its former self. Early last week, it operated at only a fifth of its normal activity because rail lines had been shut down for eight days. Cantilever rail-mounted gantry cranes that normally handle containers for trains didn’t have anything to load or unload.

Could this have been foreseen? Yeah, absolutely. The decay and vulnerability of Canada's essential infrastructure has been ignored for decades. We were warned that harsher, more demanding conditions would become our new normal and they have. And when they came, as predicted, all we could do is watch as disaster played out.

Infrastructure isn't sexy. There's little political capital to be gleaned from this sort of spending. There are more profitable uses for that money so you just kick the can down the road. And then, boom, this happens. Then you fly in, muster up your best faux-sincerity, uttering words of assurance. What a farce.

Justin tells us he's a real climate warrior but is he? Hardly. He's just another in a long line of panhandlers. A real yak-yak artist and it's 90 per cent pure horseshit.

So here we sit, in a mess, with everyone waiting for somebody else to fix it. The feds sent soldiers. They were on the payroll anyway.  They're fine people and we should be grateful to have them but they aren't a fix.

As we saw in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia this climate emergency is a truly national crisis.  Soldiers yes but we also need an army of engineers to identify our vulnerabilities and begin designing the infrastructure we'll need in the decades ahead.

Trudeau has to pull his thumb out. The climate emergency has to go to the top of the pile. We've got to get ahead of this because we'll never afford the cost of lagging behind.

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