ADAM BLASBERG
FACTOID
19 per cent of Canada's total trade in goods (by dollar value) goes through Port Metro Vancouver
P
ort Metro Vancouver is
running out of land—over
40 acres of available land
in the Lower Mainland is
converted into housing each year—
and according to Robin Silvester,
the authority's president and
CEO,
the consequences for the regional
economy will be dire. Real estate—
or a lack thereof—is just one of
many issues facing the 48-year-old
Silvester, who is tasked with setting
the long-term strategy and oversee-
ing the day-to-day operations of
North America's fourth-largest port.
Silvester enters his seventh year on
the job in March—and according
to the London-born, Cambridge-
educated engineer (who previously
served as
CEO of P&O Ports Canada,
DP World Ltd. and British Steel), the
job has become ever more challeng-
ing as the port's activities become
more contested.
You've been warning about a
shortage of industrial land for
half a decade now. What kind
of action are you seeing from
government?
I would say, unfortunately,
entirely the wrong results. If you
look at what's happened since
Metro Vancouver's Regional
Growth Strategy was put in place,
we've seen the industrial land
zoned to other uses. We have four
per cent of the industrial land
in the Lower Mainland in Port
Moody, the
IOCO [Imperial Oil
Co.] lands, designated as a special
study area with a view to it being
converted to other uses—that's
four per cent of the land base
where 23 per cent of the jobs in
Robin Silvester
T h e C o n v e r s a t i o n
the Lower Mainland happen. It's
not a 20- or 30-year problem; it's
a five- to 10-year problem, and it's
got to be addressed otherwise we
risk the Lower Mainland ceasing
to be an economically viable hub
and ceasing to be sustainable.
There's been a lot of public
opposition to the way in
which the port assessed
the thermal coal export
terminal at Fraser
Surrey Docks. How
was the scope of the
port's environmental
process defined?
We have a hugely robust
environmental assess-
ment process. At the
start, the opposition
focused entirely on coal,
the commodity, and then
searched around
for other issues to
try and stop the
projects. That's
fine—it's a demo-
cratic society, they
have a right to try
and do that—but
what I found very
frustrating was how
they willfully ignored
the robust work being
done in the environmen-
tal assessment we had.
There was a very detailed air
modelling, a very detailed
human health risk
assessment,
and I'm
confident
that we have
ensured that
The CEO of Canada's largest port faces one of the most challenging
years in the authority's history by Jacob Parry
SOURCE:
PORT METRO
VANCOUVER
THE PORT'S TOP
DESTINATIONS OF
OUTBOUND CARGO*
*in metric
tonnes, by
country in
2014
China
24 million
Japan
16 million
South Korea
12 million
India
5 million
MARCH 2016 BCBUSINESS 17
