News Release Archive
TRANSPORTATION/COMMUNICATIONS--MINISTER MEETS COMMISSIONER ------------------------------------------------------------ Shipping lines will not pay for navigational aids they don't need at Halifax if they can get a better price to do business in Baltimore or New York, was the message Transportation and Communications Minister Richie Mann took to Coast Guard Commissioner John Thomas at a private meeting late today. The minister provided a copy of the provincial brief to the commissioner on cost recovery principles proposed last month by the Coast Guard. "Concerned governments, shippers, carriers, and the business and labour communities in this area have been telling the CCG that any cost recovery regime should have a distance component and a cargo component. The distance component is a measure of the amount of service used. There would be a direct relationship between the amount of services used, and the resulting cost. There would be a discipline of demand by the users, and the users would have an incentive to continue to pressure the CCG for efficiency and cost reduction. Mr. Commissioner, that is the proper principle," the brief reads. "This province, and the shippers and businesses in this province, understand and support user-pay," Mr. Mann said. "Everyone who ships through Halifax or any other Atlantic coastal port pays the full cost of rail shipment inland -- does it make sense that those same shippers and businesses should have to subsidize movement of goods by water to inland Ports? We have lived with user fees, and have built them into our cost structures so that we are able to compete with the most aggressive of U.S. east coast ports. An additional, unreasonable cost, however, would tip that competitive balance, and Canada would lose the business." Mr. Mann will lead a small representative delegation to Ottawa to meet with Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Fred Mifflin, who is responsible for the Coast Guard. He will urge the federal minister to establish an independent analysis of the broad public policy implications for the Coast Guard's proposals for cost recovery compared with the true user fee approach being applied to airports, marine services such as the Bluenose Ferry, and to rail. "We are certainly eager to work with the Coast Guard to reach a fair and equitable user fee arrangement, but it is critical that the Government of Canada understand the issue of competitiveness, and what that means for this region," Mr. Mann said. -30- EDITORS NOTE: A backgrounder on the meeting is available by calling 902-424-4492. Contact: Donna McCready 902-424-8687 jlw Feb. 08, 1996 5:15 p.m.