National Supply Chain Strategy
Location: National
Issue/source: Supply Chains / TRAN
Date: March 2024
Suggested Responses
- Ensuring that Canada’s supply chains are reliable and efficient is a priority for the Government of Canada and will help Canada respond to the rising cost of living and make exports more competitive.
- The National Supply Chain Office was launched on December 1, 2023, with the foremost goal of working with private and public sector partners in all modes to drive coordinated actions that will increase efficiency and resiliency across our supply chains, including mitigating impacts from disruptions.
- As the work of the Office advances, the key priorities include:
- providing overarching leadership, coordination, and external outreach to examine and respond to specific domestic and international supply chain issues, including during disruptions;
- supporting data sharing for end-to-end supply chain visibility and digitalization as part of work to optimize systems and enable evidence-based decisions; and
- developing and implementing a National Supply Chain Strategy to drive collaboration across sectors on shared priorities.
- These actions will help improve economic capacity and provide opportunities for businesses to expand elsewhere within Canada and into global markets.
- The Office has already launched engagement with stakeholders to identify priorities and working groups to focus on specific actions.
- The National Supply Chain Strategy will position Canada for the long-term while providing guidance and opportunities to collaborate towards a common vision.
- The Strategy will set a high-level vision for Canada’s transportation and logistics supply chain, and provide a framework for Transport Canada, and specifically the National Supply Chain Office, to lead collaboration with government, system operators, and other partners to improve supply chain performance in Canada.
Background Information
- The creation of the National Supply Chain Office, as announced in Budget 2023, responds to one of the key recommendations of the National Supply Chain Task Force, established in 2022 to examine key issues affecting Canada’s supply chain operations.
- The National Supply Chain Office will work with industry and other orders of government to respond to disruptions and better coordinate action to increase the capacity, efficiency, and reliability of Canada’s transportation supply chain infrastructure.
- One of the Office’s key early deliverables is the development of a National Supply Chain Strategy, with input from many branches within Transport Canada, which is anticipated to be published mid-2024.
- The Strategy sets a vision to foster a well-functioning national goods movement network for Canadian businesses to engage in trade and enable Canada’s economy to thrive. To achieve that vision, actions to address both near-term and long-standing issues in Canada’s transportation supply chains will be taken through five key areas of work:
- Data and Digitalization Initiatives
- Enhancing Capacity and Resiliency in Trade and Transportation
- Modernizing Regulatory and Legislative Frameworks
- Border Fluidity and Surety of Supply
- Addressing Labour Shortages and Skills Development
- The Office will also be responsible for overseeing the implementation of the Strategy, while actions contributing to the Strategy will take place across the department and through engagement with industry partners.
- The Strategy is likely to be followed by high-level public action plans and/or progress reports.
- Meanwhile, the Office has already begun engaging with industry at both the national and corridor levels.
- The national virtual forum in December was attended by over 300 participants and focused on introducing the Office and its mandate.
- Engagement at the corridor level focuses on establishing priorities for collaborative action, as well as establishing working groups with industry to drive results.
- For the Western Corridor, the Office convened a table in January across all modes, nodes, and commodities that are involved in shipping through Canada’s west coast. At this meeting, the Office garnered agreement among key parties to begin work immediately to tackle constraints in the west. Early areas of focus will be enhancing visibility and coordination, starting with prairie grain and containerized goods, and examining opportunities to increase rail fluidity.
- For the Eastern Corridor, the Office invited stakeholders to participate in collaborative roundtables in February with both industry and governmental representatives from the eastern supply chain network. Participants are looking forward to the establishment of industry-led working groups in the next few weeks, which will focus on mapping and optimizing the eastern supply chain.