Canada’s transport infrastructure unready for stormy future: Senator Simons
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In mid-November 2021, the Fraser Valley and Sumas Prairie in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland were inundated by massive flooding. A so-called atmospheric river produced so much torrential rain that a number of B.C.’s terrestrial rivers — including the Nooksack, Chilliwack, Coquihalla, Coldwater, Similkameen and Tulameen — were overwhelmed.
Thousands of people were displaced. Tens of thousands of acres of Canada’s richest farmland were underwater. And shockingly, every single major transportation route between the Port of Vancouver and the rest of Canada — from highways to rail lines — was rendered impassable due to mudslides and flood waters that blocked, barricaded or washed out some of the country’s most vital transportation corridors.
The Trans-Canada. The Coquihalla. Highways 3, 7 and 99. Metro Vancouver was cut off from the rest of Canada by road. At least four people were killed in a mudslide near a major highway. Add to that, main lines belonging to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) and the Canadian National Railway (CN) were severed at multiple locations, meaning there was no freight or passenger rail connection between Vancouver and Kamloops, and hence the rest of Canada.
The supply chain shocks were immediate and tremendous. Nothing could get out of the Port of Vancouver — and nothing could get in. It was a sobering moment for me, as an Albertan, to realize how vulnerable prairie farmers, manufacturers and businesses of all kinds were. One big rainstorm and all our organizational certainties were blown asunder.
It could have been worse. CP and CN, along with the B.C. and federal governments, worked together and worked virtual miracles, getting rail and road infrastructure restored faster than almost anyone had dared to hope. But the floods of 2021 should have been a huge wake-up call to this country. A claxon to alert us to the fragility of our basic transportation infrastructure and the necessity to build resilience into our supply chain networks now, while we still have the chance to mitigate some of the harsh impacts of climate change.
In our huge, sprawling, sparsely populated country, we are unusually susceptible to the impact of extraordinary weather events on our highways and rail lines, our seaports and airports. When our trains and our trucks, our ships and ferries and planes can’t get through, we are all held hostage to our geography.
In 2021, it was British Columbia. But almost no part of Canada’s transportation network is immune to the potential for floods, wildfires, blizzards, hurricanes or tornadoes that snarl and kink and sever the supply chains that are supposed to bind and unite us.
The state of our physical transportation infrastructure — much of it a legacy of the 19th and 20th centuries — is just part of the problem.
In the wake of the labour shocks of COVID-19, we haven’t properly restored our human infrastructure either. The Christmastime blizzards of December 2022, which disrupted airports from Vancouver to Toronto and snarled Via Rail’s busiest corridor, made that all too obvious. We have a shortage of pilots, of passenger agents, of ground crews, of air traffic controllers — so when the weather throws us a curve ball, there’s no resilience or give in the system.
We don’t have the needed emergency response plans or emergency response crews to rescue passengers stuck on storm-stalled trains or grounded airplanes, leaving frantic travellers effectively captive. And while those personal stories of travellers who couldn’t make it home for Christmas resonate most emotionally with us, these weather-related snarls, made worse by staffing levels, had a punishing effect on our air, rail and road freight systems, too.
Climate change isn’t coming. It’s already here. While people argue about what we need to do to stop global warming from getting worse, we need to face up to some harsh realities. Our transportation infrastructure is not engineered for the future we face now. And our labour market isn’t either.
We need to get ready for what’s ahead — or prepare ourselves for supply chain shocks that will shake all our complacent certainties.
Senator Paula Simons represents Alberta in the Senate. She is deputy chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry and a member of the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications.
A version of this article was published in the January 18, 2023 edition of The Hill Times.
In mid-November 2021, the Fraser Valley and Sumas Prairie in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland were inundated by massive flooding. A so-called atmospheric river produced so much torrential rain that a number of B.C.’s terrestrial rivers — including the Nooksack, Chilliwack, Coquihalla, Coldwater, Similkameen and Tulameen — were overwhelmed.
Thousands of people were displaced. Tens of thousands of acres of Canada’s richest farmland were underwater. And shockingly, every single major transportation route between the Port of Vancouver and the rest of Canada — from highways to rail lines — was rendered impassable due to mudslides and flood waters that blocked, barricaded or washed out some of the country’s most vital transportation corridors.
The Trans-Canada. The Coquihalla. Highways 3, 7 and 99. Metro Vancouver was cut off from the rest of Canada by road. At least four people were killed in a mudslide near a major highway. Add to that, main lines belonging to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) and the Canadian National Railway (CN) were severed at multiple locations, meaning there was no freight or passenger rail connection between Vancouver and Kamloops, and hence the rest of Canada.
The supply chain shocks were immediate and tremendous. Nothing could get out of the Port of Vancouver — and nothing could get in. It was a sobering moment for me, as an Albertan, to realize how vulnerable prairie farmers, manufacturers and businesses of all kinds were. One big rainstorm and all our organizational certainties were blown asunder.
It could have been worse. CP and CN, along with the B.C. and federal governments, worked together and worked virtual miracles, getting rail and road infrastructure restored faster than almost anyone had dared to hope. But the floods of 2021 should have been a huge wake-up call to this country. A claxon to alert us to the fragility of our basic transportation infrastructure and the necessity to build resilience into our supply chain networks now, while we still have the chance to mitigate some of the harsh impacts of climate change.
In our huge, sprawling, sparsely populated country, we are unusually susceptible to the impact of extraordinary weather events on our highways and rail lines, our seaports and airports. When our trains and our trucks, our ships and ferries and planes can’t get through, we are all held hostage to our geography.
In 2021, it was British Columbia. But almost no part of Canada’s transportation network is immune to the potential for floods, wildfires, blizzards, hurricanes or tornadoes that snarl and kink and sever the supply chains that are supposed to bind and unite us.
The state of our physical transportation infrastructure — much of it a legacy of the 19th and 20th centuries — is just part of the problem.
In the wake of the labour shocks of COVID-19, we haven’t properly restored our human infrastructure either. The Christmastime blizzards of December 2022, which disrupted airports from Vancouver to Toronto and snarled Via Rail’s busiest corridor, made that all too obvious. We have a shortage of pilots, of passenger agents, of ground crews, of air traffic controllers — so when the weather throws us a curve ball, there’s no resilience or give in the system.
We don’t have the needed emergency response plans or emergency response crews to rescue passengers stuck on storm-stalled trains or grounded airplanes, leaving frantic travellers effectively captive. And while those personal stories of travellers who couldn’t make it home for Christmas resonate most emotionally with us, these weather-related snarls, made worse by staffing levels, had a punishing effect on our air, rail and road freight systems, too.
Climate change isn’t coming. It’s already here. While people argue about what we need to do to stop global warming from getting worse, we need to face up to some harsh realities. Our transportation infrastructure is not engineered for the future we face now. And our labour market isn’t either.
We need to get ready for what’s ahead — or prepare ourselves for supply chain shocks that will shake all our complacent certainties.
Senator Paula Simons represents Alberta in the Senate. She is deputy chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry and a member of the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications.
A version of this article was published in the January 18, 2023 edition of The Hill Times.