The way Port Metro President and CEO Robin Sylvester tells it, we’re facing a major shortage of port capacity in the coming years, justifying the plans of his organization and both senior levels of government to continue a massive build-out of Tsawwassen’s Deltaport, along with associated container storage and highway infrastructure.

But is there any real truth to this claim?

Sylvester alleges that recent statistics “highlight the importance of infrastructure upgrades.” In fact, recent statistics – supplied by the Port itself – reveal that planned Gateway container infrastructure projects at Deltaport are simply not needed. These numbers do not support the $1.2 billion South Fraser Perimeter Road that is currently under construction. Nor do they support plans for a second Terminal at Deltaport with three new container berths.
 
It is true that Port Metro Vancouver’s container business has increased 5% since last year, making up for the dip during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009.  However, it has increased just 0.1 % in total since 2007!
 
For years now, the Port has been making unrealistic predictions of container growth to help justify port expansion. Back in 2005, the Port predicted container traffic would reach between 2.8 and 3.5 Million TEUs (the standard metric for container volumes) by 2010. They used this prediction to justify construction of a third berth at Deltaport’s original terminal, completing construction in late 2009 (now they want to build a second terminal there, with three new berths). 

But in reality, the Port’s lowest case prediction (as of 2005) of 2.8 million TEUs for 2010 has still not been realized. The actual total for 2010 was 2.5 million TEUs, the same as 2007 – basically no growth at all in five years.
 
Worse still, Port Metro Vancouver already has the potential to handle 6.7 million TEUs with efficiency improvements and without a new terminal at Deltaport.
 
In addition, the Port of Prince Rupert has the potential to expand to handle another 5 million TEUs. That would more than quadruple BC’s current container traffic capacity, to a total of nearly 12 Million TEU’s – roughly four times the current total for the whole of Western Canada. And what growth in shipping demand there is, will more likely occur in Prince Rupert, not Vancouver, due to significant logistical advantages (2 days less sailing time for starters) that no amount of government aid can take away.
 
Statistics also show that the big growth in the container business is in Prince Rupert, where traffic grew 29.5% in 2010 and 16.5% so far this year. The infrastructure in Prince Rupert is already in place and they are using only 50% of capacity.

So why spend millions more tax dollars to trash top-grade farmland and critical habitats for salmon, orca and millions of migratory birds of Canada’s major stopover of the Pacific Flyway at the mouth of the Fraser River – especially when we plainly don’t need the added port capacity and associated infrastructure?!

Port Metro’s repeatedly incorrect projections and misuse of data need to be challenged. The consequences of the continued mass-industrialization of Delta for our environment, health and tax coffers are simply too great to be making the wrong decisions, based upon bad information.