VanPort licensing system for container haulers extended

VANCOUVER — Canadian regulators have extended a Order of Council that included a controversial container-licensing scheme at the Port of Vancouver for an additional 90 days.

Published this week in the Canada Gazette Part II, the order, as part of the Canada Transportation Act, authorizes for-hire truck operators, owner-operators, shippers, brokers, and the operators of the ports of Vancouver and Fraser River to adhere to the Memorandum of Agreement, dated July 29, 2005.

At that time, the Vancouver Port Authority appealed to Transport Canada for support of an interim licence provision the VPA implemented in order to end a six-week strike by independent container haulers servicing the ports in the Lower Mainland.

For hire-carrier contracting the 1,200 owner-ops — who were being represented by the ad-hoc group Vancouver Container Truck Association — were forced to sign the VPA licence memorandum if they wanted to be allowed access to the ports. The agreement required carriers to adhere to the compensation provisions laid out by government mediator Vince Ready — provisions that carriers overwhelmingly rejected weeks earlier.

In November, a task force commissioned by the governments of Canada and B.C. recommended making the licence program permanent. The task force claims it was “market failure” in the container sector that led to the trucker standoff. Accordingly, it said that “standards for remuneration are necessary to address issues in the operation of the market for supply of trucking services, and that enforceability is required across the market place.”

The purpose of this latest order, therefore, is to “ensure stability of the national transportation system” and “provide a suitable opportunity for the federal and provincial governments and ports of Vancouver and Fraser River to further develop and implement a strategic long-term framework that contains the necessary components of a lasting solution.”

“This is substantially the same as the order of October 27, 2005. It allows certain parties to engage in specific commercial arrangements without provisions of the Competition Act and directs the ports of Vancouver and Fraser River to ensure that an effective licensing program for accessing the properties of these ports, for the purposes of the movement of containers, is in place,” Neil Weatherdon, policy advisor at Transport Canada, confirmed to TodaysTrucking.com. “Although this is a new Order in Council, it effectively ensures that the status quo is maintained for the next 90 days– until late April 2006.”

Therefore, the rules in respect of rates, charges and terms and conditions as set out in the original order remain the same.

Nothing in this order is intended to affect any established collective labour agreement between carriers and unionized drivers.

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