STRENGTHENING DATA SHARING IN TRADE CORRIDORS
Breakdowns and inefficiencies in our supply chains pose difficult challenges for Canadians and Canadian businesses. The Minister of Transport was directed in his 2021 mandate letter to reduce and prevent supply chain bottlenecks in Canada’s transportation networks through the National Trade Corridors Fund and legislative and regulatory authorities. Budget 2022 announced $136.3M in funding over 5 years to support industry-driven supply chain digitalization, as part of a package of measures aimed at making our supply chains stronger, improving the ability of Canadian businesses to export their goods abroad and delivering essential goods to our communities.
Following a National Supply Chain Summit in January 2022, the Minister launched a Supply Chain Task Force to provide ideas on how we can strengthen our supply chain, now and in the future.
Observations and recommendations from the Task Force report, based on extensive consultations with industry and labour representatives across the country, include calls for government to work with industry on data to improve understanding of the transportation network to support resilient supply chains and identify and monitor safety and hazards directly supporting supply chain resiliency and responsiveness to disruption events.
The proposed amendments to the Canada Transportation Act aim to enhance the sharing of information between the Government of Canada and entities involved in transportation supply chains. The goal of this is to enhance visibility and support evidence-based decision making. This includes:
- Providing the Minister of Transport the authority to compel certain federally-regulated entities and entities using the federally regulated transportation system to provide information in cases of unusual and significant disruption to the national transportation system or any portion thereof;
- Provide for an authority to require that federally regulated entities and entities using the federally regulated transportation system share prescribed information with other such entities in a prescribed form and manner while also requiring protection of confidential information; and
- Ensuring transparency amongst the traveling public allowing customers to be better-informed for their future and/or current travel plans by requiring carriers providing air-transportation-related services to publish relevant performance data on their respective websites making this publicly available.
Current planning would see the proposed legislative amendments being introduced in Parliament within the Budget Implementation Act 2023 and coming into force before the summer recess in 2023. This timing is required to support launch of the digital strategy as a pillar of the broader National Supply Chain Strategy.