Adversity is a good test for the reliability of critical infrastructure and processes.
In B.C., it is vital that the province passes that test when it comes to its transportation corridors.
After all, B.C.’s Asia-Pacific Gateway is the country’s conduit to the transpacific loop, one of the world’s busiest trade routes. But that gateway is under duress now and will likely be under more soon.
Activist rail and road blockades and upwardly spiralling pandemic fears will do that.
The good news for B.C. is that its Asia-Pacific Gateway, led by the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert, are under astute and far-sighted management. Both have worked hard to erase international perceptions of unreliability seeded by past port labour disruptions and independent truckers’ disputes in B.C. Both, too, have committed to multimillion-dollar infrastructure investments to improve goods movement efficiency.
Canada’s two national railway companies have also invested heavily in rail lines and other infrastructure in B.C. and the rest of Western Canada.
But the adversity test presented by blockades and an unpredictable virus threatens to trump good management and strategic infrastructure investment.
The blockades will, if they have not already, rekindle reliability doubts in the minds of global cargo carrier lines, and because the allegiance of shipping line owners is to predictability and efficiency of container cargo movement, not specific ports or port operators, there is no guarantee that the flow of goods the blockades have diverted to American ports will return to B.C. ports.
Key competitors to Vancouver and Prince Rupert, such as the Northwest Seaport Alliance, are banking on that by investing heavily in major terminal infrastructure expansion and cargo movement modernization.
Meanwhile, fear over COVID-19’s pandemic potential has cut deeply into transpacific and other major trade route traffic.
Ensuring business flows during a crisis when that flow slows is the test on the table today. Canada’s prospects of achieving a passing score in early 2020 are not looking good.
