Bye Bye to Tariffs
Salut to Tariffs
Canada’s Pacific Front Door — Part Three
Put the Accountant on the Dock
Lower Costs, Better Supply and Canadian Jobs
Parts One and Two dealt with the problem and the opportunity.
Part Three is about the money.
Can Canada move more of its trade directly through British Columbia, cut unnecessary costs out of the supply chain, create Canadian jobs and still make the numbers work?
That is the test.
No speeches. No wishful thinking.
Put the accountant on the dock and follow the money.
Start With One Box
Take a Mexican electrical component made for a Canadian customer.
The simple route should be:
Mexico → British Columbia → Canadian customer.
Yet in 2024 Canada imported about C$47.3 billion in Mexican-origin goods, and roughly C$19.4 billion of those goods arrived in Canada from the United States after first entering the American commercial system.
That is more than 40%.
That number does not tell us exactly what every middleman charged. We would need individual invoices to know that.
But it tells us something else very clearly.
A great deal of trade between Canada and Mexico is being handled, stored, financed, distributed or transported through another country's commercial system before reaching Canadians.
That work has value.
And Canada should be asking a very simple question:
How much of that work can we bring home?
There Is More Money in a Container Than the Freight Charge
When most of us think about shipping, we picture a ship carrying a box.
But a container creates business long before and long after it crosses the ocean.
Someone arranges the shipment.
Someone finances the purchase.
Someone insures it.
Someone handles the customs paperwork.
Someone unloads it.
Someone stores it.
Someone keeps refrigerated cargo cold.
Someone moves it by truck.
Someone puts it on a train.
Someone repairs the container and equipment.
Someone sorts, packages or distributes the goods.
Someone sells the product to the next customer.
Those are businesses.
Those are wages.
Those are jobs.
If Canada can move more of its trade directly, we do not simply change the route of the container.
We move more of the economy surrounding that container into Canada.
British Columbia Is the Front Door
This is where British Columbia has an enormous advantage.
We already have two major Pacific container gateways.
In 2024 Vancouver handled about 3.47 million TEU and Prince Rupert about 739,000 TEU.
Together, that is roughly 4.21 million TEU a year.
So we are not talking about creating a Canadian Pacific transportation system from scratch.
It is already here.
The question is how much more Canadian north-south trade we can put through it.
Start modestly.
10,000 TEU would equal only about 0.24% of current B.C. container traffic.
25,000 TEU would be about 0.59%.
50,000 TEU would be about 1.19%.
A forty-foot container is roughly two TEU.
So 50,000 TEU works out to about 25,000 forty-foot containers a year.
That sounds like a lot until we divide it by 365 days.
It is about:
68 containers a day.
Across the two major ports of British Columbia.
That is not some impossible national transformation.
That is a manageable amount of freight.
And it is enough to start proving whether the economics work.
Now Put Dollars Against Those Boxes
Suppose 50,000 TEU — approximately 25,000 forty-foot containers — could be moved through a more direct Canadian supply chain.
We do not yet know the exact savings. That is what the business case must determine.
But we can show why even modest savings matter.
If unnecessary transportation, warehousing, handling and delay were reduced by an average of:
C$500 per container — C$12.5 million a year
C$1,000 per container — C$25 million a year
C$2,000 per container — C$50 million a year
C$4,000 per container — C$100 million a year
These are not claims that every container will save that amount.
They show us the size of the prize.
The real work is to take actual products and calculate the actual numbers.
A Mexican electrical component.
Guatemalan coffee.
Ecuadorian bananas and shrimp.
Peruvian fruit.
Chilean seafood.
Then do the same thing going south with Canadian goods.
Machinery.
Electrical equipment.
Agricultural equipment.
Cold-storage and refrigeration equipment.
Food-processing machinery.
Forest products.
Paper and packaging.
Engineered wood.
Mining and industrial equipment.
The accountant follows each product from factory to customer and counts every cost along the way.
Then we know what we are dealing with.
Food Gives Us Another Measure: Time
There is another cost that does not always appear clearly on a freight invoice.
Time.
A machine part can sit in a warehouse for another week.
A strawberry cannot.
Neither can seafood, bananas, avocados or many of the other products Canada buys from the Pacific Americas.
Every unnecessary transfer and warehouse stop consumes part of that product's useful life.
For refrigerated and fresh goods, a shorter and better-managed supply chain can mean better quality when the product reaches the Canadian customer.
Less handling can mean less damage.
Less delay can mean more shelf life.
A stronger Canadian cold chain also creates work in refrigeration, warehousing, transportation, inspection, maintenance and food distribution.
So the benefit is not simply getting a container here cheaper.
It is getting the product here better and sooner.
And Then Fill the Box Going Back
This corridor cannot become a one-way import system.
That would miss half the opportunity.
The containers coming north need Canadian cargo going south.
That is where the rest of Canada enters the picture.
A company in Ontario manufacturing industrial machinery should be able to move its product west by rail and onto a Canadian-controlled Pacific service.
Saskatchewan agricultural equipment can move south.
Alberta manufactured and processed products can move south.
Quebec machinery and technology can move south.
Prairie agricultural products can use the corridor where container or refrigerated shipping makes sense.
British Columbia forest products, machinery, food products and manufactured goods can move directly into these growing markets.
The stronger the southbound cargo becomes, the stronger the entire transportation system becomes.
We are not trying to build an import route.
We are building a two-way Canadian trade route.
British Columbia Gets the First Economic Lift
Because the goods enter and leave through British Columbia, much of the first round of employment happens here.
Port workers.
Rail workers.
Truck drivers.
Warehouse workers.
Refrigeration technicians.
Heavy-duty mechanics.
Electricians.
Customs brokers.
Freight forwarders.
Container repair.
Food inspection.
Packaging.
Distribution.
Insurance.
Finance.
Logistics and computer systems.
British Columbia already had roughly 156,000 people working in transportation and warehousing in 2024, with about 50,000 job openings forecast between 2025 and 2035.
The Port of Vancouver supports roughly 103,000 jobs in British Columbia.
The Prince Rupert gateway reports approximately 7,940 full-time jobs and about C$690 million in annual wages.
So when we talk about increasing Canadian trade through B.C., we are not talking about an economic theory.
We already know what ports and transportation corridors create.
The opportunity is to give that existing Canadian system more Canadian business.
Then the Benefits Move Across Canada
British Columbia is the front door.
It is not the whole house.
Coffee arriving in Vancouver may be roasted in Alberta.
Electrical components may be used by a manufacturer in Ontario.
Fruit landing in Prince Rupert can move by rail into the Prairies and Central Canada.
Machinery manufactured thousands of kilometres from the Pacific can travel in the opposite direction and leave Canada through B.C.
Warehouses and distribution centres may begin in British Columbia, but the supply chains behind them reach across the country.
Canadian manufacturers gain new customers.
Farmers gain new markets.
Railways carry more Canadian freight.
Truckers move it.
Canadian ports handle it.
Canadian businesses finance, insure and distribute it.
That is the balance.
British Columbia gets stronger by becoming Canada's Pacific front door.
Canada gets stronger because that door serves the whole country.
What Does Success Look Like?
We do not need to begin with a million containers.
We need enough cargo to prove the system.
That is why the 10,000, 25,000 and 50,000 TEU numbers matter.
They give us practical targets.
At each level we can measure:
What did the product cost before?
What does it cost now?
How much time was saved?
How much handling was removed?
How much Canadian warehousing and transportation was created?
How many Canadian companies participated?
How much Canadian cargo moved south?
How many Canadian jobs resulted?
And most importantly:
Is the system making money?
If 50,000 TEU proves the corridor, then we grow it.
If certain products do not work, we do not ship them.
If certain ports or routes perform better, we concentrate the cargo there.
This is not about forcing trade into a political idea.
It is about building a Canadian transportation business around cargo that already exists.
The Money Is Bigger Than the Box
For decades Canada has looked at international trade mainly as the value of the product being bought or sold.
We need to start looking at the value of everything that happens around that product.
Transportation.
Warehousing.
Cold storage.
Distribution.
Financing.
Insurance.
Maintenance.
Packaging.
Technology.
Processing.
And the people doing all of it.
That is where a great deal of the economic value is hiding.
British Columbia has the geography to capture more of it.
Canada has the products to send south.
Our Pacific American partners have products Canadians already buy.
And the trade routes between us already exist.
What has been missing is a deliberate Canadian effort to connect the pieces.
Part Three therefore leaves us with one number that matters more than all the speeches:
How much trade has to move through this corridor before the Canadian system pays for itself?
That takes us to Part Four.
Not another discussion about why Canada should do it.
How we actually build it.
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