Canada’s Ports Needed Fixing Long Before Trump and Export Diversification Hove into View 

From: Charles Lammam  

To: Infrastructure observers  

Date: September 10, 2026  

Re: Canada’s Ports Needed Fixing Long Before Trump and Export Diversification Hove into View 

The escalating tariff tit-for-tat with the United States underscores the importance of the federal government's goal of doubling Canada's non-US exports by 2035, a goal likely to get fresh attention next week when Ottawa hosts the world's largest investors at the Canada Investment Summit. That, in turn, puts the spotlight on Canadian ports right now, as much of what Canada sells to the rest of the world and much of what it buys from it, moves through ports: Grain, crude oil, and potash go out. Cars, machine parts, and consumer goods come in. 

A slow supply chain, including delays at ports themselves, raises costs on each side – importers pay more to stock shelves and run factories, and exporters lose contracts to competitors who can promise a delivery date and keep it. 

Unfortunately, Canada has long had issues with its port turnaround times, well pre-dating the current rush to double non-US exports. As the C.D. Howe Institute and others have noted before (see here and here), and as The Globe and Mail subsequently highlighted, the World Bank ranks container ports on how quickly they can turn ships around, and Canada's major gateways rank well behind most global peers.  

The Port of Vancouver, the country's largest, ranks 375th out of 400 ports worldwide. Montreal sits at 338th. Prince Rupert, despite carrying a large share of Canada's Pacific trade, sits at 322nd. Saint John does marginally better at 268th. Only Halifax breaks the pattern, at 29th. 

Some ports are well ahead of ours partly because they function as pure transshipment hubs, or because they have a more easily accessible hinterland, both factors that minimize time at quayside. But the importance of bolstering our competitiveness against the rest is only heightened by the fact that the global fight for capital is intensifying. 

Using satellite vessel-tracking data, the Bank of Canada found that Canada's global rank for total ship movement capacity fell to 23rd by 2023 from 6th in 2016, as global supply chains grew less centred on North America. The newest container ships now carry more than 20,000 boxes; Canada's ports can't handle much beyond 15,000. 

Transport Canada's own annual report concluded the transportation sector has posted the weakest productivity growth in the G7 for 25 years. On ports specifically, it found Canada has "no meaningful automated port capacity" while competitors pull ahead, alongside chronic underinvestment in marine asset growth. Regulatory requirements have also "increased significantly" since 2006, extending timelines and raising costs across the sector. 

Even Minister Steven MacKinnon has acknowledged that Canada’s transportation and supply chain performance currently isn't the world-class it needs to be given the country's geography. 

So, what's actually going on at the country's biggest gateway? 

A report prepared for the Chamber of Shipping of British Columbia (CSBC), which dug specifically into Vancouver's numbers, points to two key issues. 

First, rail capacity, not crane speed, influences how long a ship stays in port. How fast a crane unloads a container matters less than how fast that container clears the dock by train. Vancouver has missed its own target on this for years. Containers there wait nearly six days on average for a train, against a three-day target the port set for itself. 

Second, the sequence of union engagement matters. DP World, the company that operates the Centerm terminal under lease from the port authority, spent $350 million to install automated cranes. They still don't run at full capacity, because they were erected before the company had a deal with the dockworkers' union on what the technology meant for jobs. Years of disputes followed, then a 10-day, coast-wide lockout. 

Deltaport, a different terminal run by a different operator 35 kilometres south, ran the same technology play and negotiated with the union first. Five years on, it hasn't had a single labour disruption, and its rail capacity is up by more than half. 

Some of what's broken requires little in the way of money. Make Deltaport's approach standard, negotiate before you install, and build a body to coordinate scheduling between the port and the railways feeding it. The same goes for reducing work stoppages more broadly. From 2014 to 2023, Canada lost more working days to labour disruptions per employee than any other G7 country with comparable data. Some business groups have proposed fixes, including earlier mediation before disputes escalate into strikes or lockouts. 

But other solutions will require public investment. The CSBC report calls for a dedicated federal capital program for port infrastructure. Transport Canada's own numbers support that, with marine investment lagging the rest of the economy for decades. 

Last year's federal budget committed $5 billion of a $115-billion infrastructure plan toward trade and transport. Perhaps that needs to be bolstered. 

One sign Ottawa is taking this seriously is the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 expansion, just referred to the Major Projects Office for possible fast-tracking. This project could raise Vancouver's container capacity by roughly half. 

Canada's ports had work to do long before US tariffs entered the conversation. Export targets and tariff threats will keep changing. Fixing what's fixable with the productivity and competitiveness of our transport system is the one part of this Canada actually controls. 

Charles Lammam is senior advisor at the C.D. Howe Institute. 

To send a comment or leave feedback, email us at  blog@cdhowe.org. 

The views expressed here are those of the author. The C.D. Howe Institute does not take corporate positions on policy matters.