Submission to Transport Canada: Strengthening One Canadian Economy through trade and transportation

Transport Canada
TC.engagement.TC@tc.gc.ca

Re: Submission to Transport Canada: Strengthening One Canadian Economy through trade and transportation

Date: June 4, 2026

About Supply-Build Canada

Supply-Build Canada is an association that represents Canada’s building materials industry. We have over 1,300 member firms across Canada. Our members manufacture, distribute, sell, and export building materials. Many of our member businesses operate in rural regions and are the heartbeat of their communities.

Our industry contributes $53.1 billion into Canada’s GDP, supports more than 561,585 total jobs, and injects $4.4 billion in government tax revenue for federal ($1.8 billion), provincial ($2.2 billion), and municipal governments ($477 million).

Our industry supplies the materials that will be used to build transportation projects funded by the Trade Diversification Corridors Fund and the Arctic Infrastructure Fund. To do this effectively our members rely on a predictable, efficient, and strong national supply chain.

Supply-Build Canada Supports Improved Transportation Legislation

Supply-Build Canada is supportive of the One Canadian Economy approach, and the Government of Canada’s commitment to invest in major transportation infrastructure projects and policy changes that will help improve the movement of goods across Canada, and to international markets. We welcome upgrades to transportation corridors, reduced bottlenecks, and modernized transportation systems to lower costs and increase efficiency for businesses.

With proper engagement with industry and notice of changes made, the legislation that would have the greatest impact on supply chain efficiency for our industry are the “Tell-Us-Once” reporting system, digitization of approvals, speeding up approvals for low-risk projects, and the designation of National Trade Corridors that have clear performance goals.

Two Implementation Risks for Consideration

Supply-Build Canada would like to outline two potential risks to the proposed legislation:

1) Policies that favour one mode of transportation can disrupt existing supply chains

• The building materials industry’s manufacturing and distribution networks rely on multiple transportation modes. Legislation that subsidizes or incentivizes the use of one mode over risks disrupting current supply chains. For instance, the proposed freight rail subsidy for lumber and steel would have a negative impact for the lumber industry as businesses use rail and trucking in tandem to ship their products. The proposed subsidy would create cost disadvantages for trucking, disrupt the current supply chain by shifting more use to rail, and potentially be used by the U.S. to impose higher duties on Canadian lumber exports. Also, the subsidy would create unneeded competition between provincial lumber industries as lower freight costs would incentivize shipping product by rail interprovincially rather than by truck intraprovincially.

2) Northern transportation corridors will need support

• Supply-Build Canada recognizes the vision of northern development which offers the opportunity for new transportation exports routes. However, before utilizing northern transportation corridors for exporting goods the region will require substantial supporting infrastructure to be built. This includes road and port connections, fuel and logistics facilities, and a sustainable “last mile” delivery system. Delivering building materials face unique transportation challenges (i.e., shorter shipping periods, high costs, and specific transportation requirements). Furthermore, remote northern communities will need support and time to adjust to policy changes that would impact their transportation processes. We encourage Transport Canada to ensure that changes to legislation will take into consideration the uniqueness of transporting materials to northern communities.

Transport Canada has the opportunity to create more efficient and reliable supply chains aimed at improving export access to international markets, and strengthen domestic transportation corridors. However, current supply chains for the building materials industry are delicate- a policy change to one mode of transportation could cause disruption to existing transportation networks.

We welcome the opportunity to further discuss our feedback.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Supply Build Canada

Transportation Canada's final report can be read here: What we heard: Strengthening One Canadian Economy through trade and transportation