Prime Minister Mark Carney visits the Centerm container ship terminal at the Port of Vancouver in August, 2025.Chris Helgren/Reuters
John Turley-Ewart is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail, a regulatory compliance consultant and a Canadian banking historian.
The bigger threat to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s mission to double exports to non-U.S. jurisdictions by 2035 is a problem of our making, rather than the tiresome bluster of President Donald Trump. A steady diet of political indifference, bingeing on bureaucracy and peppering the mix with bouts of labour militancy has clogged Canada’s large ports, our critical commercial arteries to global markets.
Transport Canada’s own assessment has shown our ports are “managed primarily in favour of importers and containerized exports are a secondary consideration.” The Montreal Economic Institute reported that Ottawa’s restrictions on automation are restraining port modernization and the efficiency it brings. RBC suggests our ports are “among the least efficient in the industrialized world,” posing one of the top economic risks facing Canada in 2026.
Mr. Carney can make all the sales trips he wants and deliver speeches the world needs to hear. Yet, if we cannot move our goods to global markets with efficiency and competitively from our largest ports, others will do it from theirs. Those others are Americans.
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Our ports in British Columbia, key gateways to Asian-Pacific countries, are amongst the worst in the world – not just among industrialized countries – when in comes to productivity. This is more than a business problem. It is a sovereign risk given the U.S.’s current taste for economic coercion.
The World Bank regularly measures the productivity of 403 container ports of all sizes across the globe. In its most recent ranking, the Port of Vancouver, responsible for shipping roughly $800-million in goods every day, and the smaller Port of Prince Rupert, rank near the bottom.
The Port of Vancouver is 389th and Prince Rupert comes in at 362nd. The Port of Montreal, moving about $400-million in goods daily, is little better, ranking 344th. In contrast, Cartagena’s Port in Colombia, a troubled and relatively poor country, ranks 46th.
Large American ports such as Seattle, New York-New Jersey, Boston, Philadelphia and Long Beach, Calif., are all run more efficiently than Canada’s largest ports. The Canadian bright light is the Port of Halifax, in 55th place.
The price of our indifference shouldn’t be dismissed. A case in point is potash, which is mostly mined in Saskatchewan. It is a much sought-after agricultural fertilizer that increases crop yields and wards off crop diseases. Canada generates a third of global potash production volume and is positioned to materially increase that in the coming years.
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Our primary potash export market is the United States. Yet there is room to expand export markets in China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia and many more countries – the very goal Mr. Carney has laid out for the country to reduce dependence on the Americans.
But last year one of our country’s most important potash miners, Nutrien, announced a $1-billion investment in the Port of Longview, Wash., deciding not to invest in the ports of Vancouver or Prince Rupert.
The company, having endured years of rail bottlenecks, labour disruptions, higher costs, and aging infrastructure, and little prospect of change, decided to mitigate its Canadian risk.
In this case, that mitigation strategy entails directing a large portion of the potash it mines through the U.S. to tidewater in Washington State. Nutrien’s decision could see half of all the potash it produces shipped through the U.S. by 2031.
If the Port of Vancouver continues to decline, even more potash could transit through Washington State in the years ahead, and with it well-paying union jobs, government revenues and logistics expertise, just as Canada is working to loosen America’s grip on our economy.
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Mr. Carney is aware. It explains his recent meeting with Mike Henry, the CEO of BHP, a mining company developing the Jansen Potash project in Saskatchewan that is expected to go into production some time in 2027.
BHP has already invested $23-billion in Canadian mining, and Mr. Henry spoke to Mr. Carney about how Canada could “continue to attract long-term investment.” No doubt that conversation included fixing B.C.’s ports.
Mr. Carney’s government has the means to do so in Bill C-5, the One Canadian Economy Act, which gives the federal cabinet the authority to declare projects in the national interest and fast-track various permitting approvals, among other efforts needed to get projects up and running quickly.
The ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert should be on that list now with plans to improve operations and upgrade infrastructure, making them competitive with rival ports in the U.S. and positioned to efficiently process higher volumes of exports to Asia-Pacific countries.
Having the two most important ports in B.C. rank amongst the least productive in the world isn’t only embarrassing. It’s a measure of indifference Mr. Carney and Canadians simply can’t abide.