Transport Minister Lisa Raitt on Friday announced a new
Ports Asset Transfer Program (PATP) to “facilitate the transfer” of port
facilities to other owners or levels of government, naming 50 ports the
government aims to get off its books.
Among those are the Port of Owen Sound on Georgian Bay where
there is a 93,000-tonne capacity Great Lakes Elevator terminal operated by
Parrish and Heimbecker (P+H).
The PATP list also includes the Port of Baie-Comeau on the
St. Lawrence Seaway, home to Cargill’s 441,780-tonne capacity grain terminal.
P+H was in talks with Transport Canada’s port programs
directorate up until January last year to take over the Owen Sound port, but
Transport Canada announced that month the talks had “ended without a
divestiture being concluded.”
Owen Sound’s harbour bottom has been filling with silt and
needs dredging soon to remain viable for commercial boat traffic, but Transport
Canada has said it would deal with the dredging issue only once a deal is
sealed for divestiture of the harbour.
In a 2012 evaluation of its port operations program,
Transport Canada found Baie-Comeau and Owen Sound — plus four other ports
remaining on the PATP list — were still “actively utilized as commercial
wharves or ports with ongoing relevance to the community and the region.
