This week the Minister of Transport, the Honourable Omar Alghabra, travelled across Canada to make several supply-chain-related funding announcements following last week’s release of the National Supply Chain Task Force’s final report. In Halifax, the conclusion of the Ports Modernization Review was announced with promises to amend the Canada Marine Act to better position ports as enablers of trade and traffic and put ports in a greater leadership role in advancing climate. In Winnipeg, the Minister announced $17 million to be spent over five years on new initiatives aimed and improving the movement of goods by rail, marine, and air modes. Initiatives include working towards a Maritime Single Window; amending the Canada Transportation Act to allow Transport Canada to offer digital service delivery to transportation operators across modes; and collaborating with industry to develop an approach to eliminate paperwork and shift to the use of electronic shipping documents for the transportation of dangerous goods. Today in Vancouver, a $136 million Advancing Industry-Driven Digitalization of Canada’s Supply Chain initiative was announced to improve planning and coordination of transportation activities to alleviate bottlenecks and reduce congestion and be more resilient to disruptions by collecting and sharing data and analytics in real-time.
