Feds preserve VanPort licence rule with legislation

OTTAWA — A controversial truck licensing system enforced by the Vancouver Port Authority has officially been enshrined into law by the Conservative government.

Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon says the enactment of new port regulations will stabilizing trucking operations at British Columbia’s Lower Mainland ports.

“These new regulations will help to ensure the long-term reliability of Lower Mainland ports for shippers and clients worldwide,” said Cannon. “We are taking action to ensure that the port licensing system is maintained and remains effective.”

Under the new regulations published in the Canada Gazette Part II today, the Vancouver and Fraser River port authorities must, by law, establish, set conditions, and enforce a licensing system for all truckers entering the ports.

The regulation essentially solidifies a previous Memorandum of Agreement, which — based on government mediator Vince Ready’s 2005 recommendations — establishes standard haulage rates container companies must pay truck operators who access port facilities.

The provisions drafted by Ready effectively ended a crippling six-week strike by 1,200 independent container haulers who were protesting rate-cutting, low wages, and skyrocketing fuel costs.

The regulation also requires the port authorities to ensure that
owner ops themselves adhere to rates in the licence system.

The licensing scheme, begrudgingly accepted by most drayage companies at the time, was extended by several Orders in Council until this past April, when federal Minister of International Trade David Emerson transferred the authority to enforce the provisions to the Vancouver Port Authority.

While this official legislation does not specifically set out that access to the ports is contingent upon the rates established in the Ready memorandum, it does give the port authorities to power to establish and maintain whatever “rates of remuneration that the owner-operator of a tractor covered by an authorization is to receive for the delivery, pick-up or movement of containers into, within or out of the port.”

“The truck licence per se we’ve had for years,” says Doug Mills of the VPA. “The new standard of truck licensing occurred with the Vince Ready agreement which was back in April and has been a condition of operation in the port ever since.”

The regulation also requires that the port authorities ensure, as a condition of the license, that the owner-operator truckers themselves adhere to any applicable legislation in respect of rates.

Some drayage firms and their contractors who agreed to the licence provisions last year have since complained that other independent truckers working the ports quickly took to undercutting the new rate standards.

In the Canada Gazette, the government acknowledges that at least two container carriers complained in submissions that the regulation is “overly restrictive” and “inconsistent with federal policy towards regulation of the transportation sector, and that the federal government is outside its jurisdiction in regulating a provincial undertaking (local drayage operators).”

In September, Bob Simpson of Port Transport (formerly Team Transport), told Today’s Trucking he was considering an appeal to a Federal Court of Canada ruling that reinforced the VPA’s jurisdiction to apply the licensing provisions.

“Our main contention is that the VPA has absolutely no right telling me what I must pay my employees when I’m not on their property,” he said.