Canada Ports & Corridors

Special Report

Vancouver sought terminal operators to build and operate RBT2 in 2002 and again in 2008 amid the global financial crisis, but there were no willing takers. On why another request for proposals wasn’ t floated again, Xotta said terminal operator selection is“ always bespoke,” but would be consistent with Canadian law and would be done in partnership with the MPO.

“ The port bellied up to the bar twice on this and without being able to get it across the line,” he said.“ I’ m determined this won’ t happen a third time.”

The shift in approach to seeking a partnership with an existing tenant rather than opening the project to bid again raised questions about whether Canadian shippers would get the most competitive terminal, according to a source close to the RBT2 development.

The Port of Montreal( pictured) has begun work on the planned C $ 1.6 billion Contrecoeur terminal. Andrej Ivanov / AFP / Getty Images

“ We didn’ t want to exclude anybody from bringing solutions forward that would help Canada.”

Roberts Bank 2 would provide 2.4 million TEUs of additional capacity to Vancouver, which, by some estimates, would near its existing full capacity by the 2030s. The port now has nominal capacity of 5 million TEUs. The current timeline, which has been delayed by lengthy environmental reviews, is for the new terminal to open in the early 2030s. The project received environmental approval in 2023.

Xotta, who is cautiously optimistic that the agreement will end with GCT as operator of RBT2, said future milestones for the proposed terminal would be receiving funding from Canada’ s Infrastructure Bank and potentially being added to a list of infrastructure projects of national importance.

Meanwhile, on the east coast, the Port of Montreal’ s own stalled mega-terminal project, known as Contrecoeur, got a recent jolt back to life thanks to a C $ 1.16 billion loan from the Infrastructure Bank after Prime Minister Mark Carney referred the project to the MPO in September 2025. DP World and the port authority are developing the C $ 2.3 million terminal, which would have an annual throughput of 1.15 million TEUs.

In a May 20 interview at the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, Carney said there is similar urgency to add port capacity in Western Canada.

“ We’ re going to run out of capacity at the Port of Vancouver over the next— well— decade in effect,” he said.“ We would likely run out of capacity sooner than that, because we would like to be growing our exports faster than that, which means we act now” to build more port capacity for container and bulk exports.

Carney has set a goal of doubling Canada’ s non-US exports by 2035 to diversify away from US trade.

email: mark. szakonyi @ spglobal. com

Eroding connections increase risk for Canada’ s ports, shippers

By Michael Angell

Canada’ s ports are less connected globally than a decade ago, exposing the country’ s shippers to more supply chain risk, its central bank says. The warning comes as the country pivots its trade relations away from the US amid plans to invest billions in its ports.

In a research report published in early May, the Bank of Canada( BOC) showed that the country’ s five largest ports have seen major declines in their connections to other global ports since 2016. The researchers used satellite data of container ship and car carrier transits to measure the number of unique destinations.

That connectivity measure dropped 74 % between 2016 and 2023, indicating“ Canadian ports became relatively less central in global shipping networks compared with what they once were,” the BOC’ s researchers said.

34 Journal of Commerce | August 3, 2026 www. joc. com