Canada’s Minister of Transport, Omar Alghabra, has announced the intention to launch a $136 million Advancing Industry-Driven Digitalization of Canada’s Supply Chain initiative. Funding for this initiative is made possible through Budget 2022, to develop digital solutions and optimize Canada’s supply chains.
This initiative, which would form a key part of Canada’s National Supply Chain Strategy, would improve the efficiency and resiliency of Canada’s supply chain by:
- Making it easier to plan and coordinate transportation activities to alleviate bottlenecks, reduce congestion and be more resilient to disruptions by collecting and sharing data and analytics in real time;
- Supporting industry-driven approaches to digital solutions, especially in the areas of data collection, coordination, and improving the visibility of the transportation network for carriers, shippers and governments;
- Supporting evidence-based decision-making to further optimize existing networks and better plan infrastructure investments; and
- Working with industry to optimize trade corridors and gateways across Canada, such as the Pacific Gateway and the Windsor-Quebec trade corridor.
The Minister also announced that Transport Canada will soon launch a new Call for Proposals under the National Trade Corridors Fund to support projects that strengthen Canada’s digital infrastructure to enhance the efficiency and reliability of our transportation supply chains.
Altogether, these investments will help establish a strong foundation on which to advance the National Supply Chain Task Force recommendations to digitalize and create end-to-end supply chain visibility in our supply chain network.
Transport Canada is also convening supply chain leaders from the railways, shippers, shipping industry, labor, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority and the technology sector, to develop and implement digital solutions that will make this gateway operate more efficiently. The Canadian government has also established an online portal for suggestions on how it can improve its supply chain performance.
Alghabra also recently announced that the Canadian government intends to introduce legislative amendments in the coming months to update the way the nation’s ports are managed and operated based on the results of the Ports Modernization Review. The proposed legislative changes will achieve several key policy objectives, including further protecting the transportation system from threats while ensuring that goods move efficiently through the supply chain. This and other proposed amendments will support the development of a new investment policy for Canada’s ports and port infrastructure to attract investment capital that is critical to the national transportation supply chain for decades to come.
