Urgently wanted: 23,000 truck drivers
Lack of people spurs supply woes: alliance
• The Liberal government is promising more money to address bottlenecks and infrastructure problems that are gumming up supply chains, but the president of the Canadian Trucking Alliance said it’s a lack of people that are slowing things down.
Alliance president Stephen Laskowski, who represents trucking companies, said the industry is desperately short of drivers and needs government help with training and recruitment costs.
“If the government’s going to ask us what supply chain actions and strategies are required to support an economic recovery, it’s addressing the labour shortage that’s in our industry,” he said. “I don’t know if anyone has more of an acute labour shortage than the trucking industry.”
Laskowski has been front and centre this week in the controversy over vaccine mandates for truckers, but he said the labour shortage goes far beyond the mandate. The alliance supports vaccination, but asked the government to consider at least delaying the cross-border rules due to the labour shortage.
On Monday, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra is hosting a “national supply-chain summit,” with the stated goal of looking for solutions to move goods faster into and across the country. A statement from his office said the summit is just a continuation of the government’s work.
“Our government has taken action to address supply chain challenges that have emerged during the pandemic,” he said. “We have been engaging with key partners from transport-related industry including ports, rail, trucking, and grocery suppliers. Investing in trade corridors and hubs is essential to our country’s overall economic recovery.”
Laskowski said the industry needs financial assistance to help train new drivers and help recruiting them both at home and abroad through immigration programs. As of last fall, the industry has 23,000 vacant driver positions, a number he expects to continue to climb even without accounting for drivers who may leave the industry over vaccination rules.
The alliance estimates over 10 million truck trips cross into the U.S. from Canada in a typical year, carrying about two-thirds of Canada’s trade. “Canada moves by truck, and the most important occupation in that supply chain is truck drivers and we need a solution.”
When Alghabra announced the summit, he also announced the Liberals would add $1.9 billion to the trade corridors fund, a program used for construction projects that could ease bottlenecks.
Lane Ferguson, with the Port of Halifax, said they’re working out the details of a proposal to allow it to handle more cargo.
“Our goal is to grow the Atlantic Gateway through new and improved rail infrastructure which will enable the port to handle the projected increases in container volumes in the next 10-plus years,” she said.
Ferguson said Halifax hasn’t had to deal with some of the issues around stalled container ships that other ports have faced, but global supply changes mean a problem anywhere can spread to Canada.
“In Halifax, we don’t have the vessel-bunching that other ports do, but it doesn’t mean we are not affected. Some of those ships you see waiting at anchorage to unload cargo at other ports are the same ships that come here.”
Matti Polychronis, a spokesperson for the Port of Vancouver, said previous investments have helped the port weather a difficult year, but more will need to be done to prevent major problems in the future.
“Going forward, sustained attention and investment from government, in collaboration with industry, is necessary to ‘future-proof’ transportation infrastructure and prevent against future supply-chain shocks.”
The trade corridor fund was launched in 2017 and has so far funded more than 100 projects, including several at ports and container facilities, but its largest projects and a quarter of the $2.1 billion it has spent went to projects in the three northern territories.
The government spent $532.7 million of the $2.1 billion in Nunavut, Yukon and the Northwest Territories including several new highway projects. The projects are important to local communities, but relatively little of Canada’s trade goes through the north.
An official in Alghabra’s office, speaking on background because of not being authorized to speak publicly, said more of the funding in this new round will be focused on bottlenecks.