The Canadian economy depends crucially on trade, with imports and exports equivalent to 64% of Canadian gross domestic product. The multimodal transportation system is a fundamental enabler of this trade.
Canada’s changing trade patterns reflect new opportunities arising from new trade agreements and growth in overseas markets; it is also influenced by our geography and the types of products we export. Many exports to overseas markets are produced far in-land, so enabling Canadian producers and manufacturers to reach foreign markets requires efficient and reliable trade corridors across the country and through our major ports.
The Canadian transportation system faces some significant fluidity challenges, including capacity constraints at key ports, bottlenecks that cause delays and disruptions to freight and passenger movements in various parts of the country, and residence to extreme weather. These constraints can negatively affect the reliability and efficiency of our supply chains, and our international competitiveness and trade.
The National Trade Corridors Fund (NTCF) is a merit-based competitive program to make strategic transportation infrastructure investments that reduce bottlenecks and build more efficient and fluid trade corridors to global markets.
The NTCF was launched in 2017 with a plan to invest $1.9 billion (B) over 11 years. Funding was accelerated through the 2018 Fall Economic Statement in support a more rapid diversification of export markets. The Government also provided an additional $400 million (M) for the North in Budget 2019, increasing the total NTCF funding to $2.3B over 11 years.
Since 2018, there have been three calls for project proposals:
General call (2017 to 2018): 39 projects approved, with over $800M in federal funding leveraging total investments of $1.9B.
Northern call targeting the territories (2018 to 2019): 11 projects approved, with over $230M in federal funding leveraging total investments of $330M.
Continuous call targeting trade diversification projects (launched January 2019 and remains open): 31 projects approved, with over $660M in federal funding leveraging total investments of $1.4B.
Through the three call for project proposals, 81 projects have been funded representing a federal contribution of $1.7B leveraging a total infrastructure investment in our trade and transportation corridors of $3.6B.
