The Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) has officially authorized the passage of vessels up to 44m wide to navigate the Quebec-Montreal section of the St Lawrence. This means the 6,000 TEU post-Panamax ships are now permitted in the channel. The previous limit had been 32m wide.

The decision was made based on the results of a study commissioned by the Montreal Port Authority (MPA) and conducted by Transport Canada, the Laurentian Pilotage Authority, the Corporation of Central St Lawrence Pilots and the CCG.

MPA president and CEO Sylvie Vachon explained what the decision will mean for the port.

Shipping lines, no matter what type of cargo they carry, will be able to substantially increase capacity on their services to Montreal, which will inevitably lead to benefits for the port’s broad customer base.”

Saying the government was pleased the idea had been quashed, Government House Leader Peter Van Loan warned such fees would have a detrimental effect on both sides of the border.

“A border fee like this would have been very damaging to both the American and Canadian economy,” said Van Loan.

International Trade Minister Ed Fast was equally elated, applauding the decision as a recognition that “free and open trade, rather than protectionism, is the way forward to create jobs and prosperity for workers in both our countries.”

The US Department of Homeland Security had wanted Congress to authorize the study of a fee that could be collected from everyone entering the US from Canada and Mexico.

But the Senate judiciary committee voted Thursday to amend an Immigration Reform Bill designed to implement stricter border security measures, and closed the door on considering charging land border crossing fees.

The fight over potential hikes in the cost of moving across the border isn’t quite over, however, as the Obama administration continues to examine ways of paring down its massive budget deficit.

The US Department of Agriculture last week also recommended imposing fees for an array of border services, including inspections of agricultural products, commercial aircraft, rail cars, ships and even passenger baggage.

Van Loan said the prospect of new charges at the Canada-US border is always looming, and that’s why the federal government has to keep sending a message they are not a good idea.

“Obviously this is an idea that pops up from time to time, but we have to remain always in Washington active in advancing our interests,” he said.

The agriculture department last week suggested new border fees should be imposed to help offset the costs borne by US Customs and Border Protection to provide free services at America’s borders.

Fast also jumped on that proposal, saying he would press upon his US counterpart the harm that USDA fees could cause to businesses and the economies in Canada and the United States.

The workers settled their dispute late Monday by agreeing to the pay offer from four middleman contractors that provide staff to a container terminal operator controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing.

The strike was the longest in years in the former British colony, now a semi-autonomous Chinese city that retains a reputation as a stronghold of laissez-faire capitalism. It raised questions about the competitiveness of the city’s port amid intensifying competition from regional rivals.

About 450 workers went on strike March 28. They originally demanded a raise of up to 23 percent to make up for pay cuts in previous years. They later said they would settle for a double-digit percentage increase.

Lawmaker and union leader Lee Cheuk-yan said the offer was a face-saving compromise but members are happy because the increase is for all workers, not just those who went on strike. The offer also includes improvements to working conditions, he added.

The striking dock workers had complained about health and safety problems such as a lack of bathroom breaks and long shifts. They expressed their anger by camping out in front of a skyscraper in Hong Kong’s financial district owned by Li.

Li’s port operator business, Hutchison Port Holdings, said it can now “focus on restoring the port to its full operational capabilities.”

The strike delayed cargo being moved on and off ships at the terminal, resulting in a backlog of 80,000-90,000 containers at the port during the strike, according to the Hong Kong Association of Freight Forwarding and Logistics.

Hutchison said last month that it was operating at 80-90 percent of capacity and that 100 ships had reportedly skipped the port because of delays. Some shipping companies chose to bypass Hong Kong in favour of nearby Shenzhen in mainland China or other ports in Asia.

Other vessels berthed at terminals in Hong Kong not controlled by Hutchison. The company operates 12 berths at four of Hong Kong’s nine container terminals and two others with a joint venture partner.

Hong Kong is a major transshipment hub for goods moving in and out of mainland China. It was the world’s busiest port for years, handling shipments of jeans, shoes and toys manufactured in southern China’s Pearl River Delta for export to consumers in the West. But it has been overtaken by Shanghai and Shenzhen in recent years.

In a presentation to stakeholders in the US capital this week, the department suggested new border fees because some federal agencies, including US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), are currently providing free services at America’s borders.

CBP works in collaboration with the USDA’s agriculture quarantine and inspection program, which provides checks of imported agricultural goods and commercial aircraft, rail cars, ships and even passenger baggage to prevent harmful pests, diseases and materials from entering the US.

“Approximately $191 million in CBP costs are associated with services for which no fee is currently charged,” the department’s presentation stated.

US federal agencies “need to recover all costs associated with fee services and have fee revenue from each fee service cover the associated costs.”

In conclusion, it said: “Consider establishing new fees.”

The spectre of increased costs at the border comes as the much-ballyhooed Canada-US Beyond the Border initiatives are supposed to be resulting in precisely the opposite state of affairs.

Ed Fast, Canada’s international trade minister, called the prospect of new border fees from the USDA “another protectionist measure”—and one his government would vigorously oppose.

“We don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like, but certainly we’ll be contacting my counterpart in the United States to press upon them that this is not helpful at all,” Fast told reporters on Parliament Hill.

“If they want to drive economic growth in the US—we want to do so in Canada—it’s not going to happen by raising new barriers at the border. It’s going to be by opening up trade, freeing up trade, so that we can drive prosperity in both of our countries.”

It’s the second time in recent weeks that the spectre of border fees has reared its ugly head. The 2014 budget from the Department of Homeland Security also proposes a border crossing fee for every vehicle or pedestrian entering the United States.

Janet Napolitano, homeland security secretary, recently noted that the processing fees of upwards of 350 million travellers a year have not been adjusted, in many cases, for more than a decade.

The Canadian government vowed too to lobby against that fee, although a New York congressman has said it’s unlikely the border crossing levy will ever come to pass given opposition to the idea by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

New USDA fees would not, however, require a congressional green light, says Birgit Matthiesen, the DC-based point person for the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters organization.

“The border crossing fee would need authority from Congress because Homeland Security is actually proposing lifting exemptions that currently cover passengers and pedestrations,” she said.

“But there is no talk of lifting exemptions with the USDA proposals, according to the initial information we’re getting.”

That means they’d be easier to establish.

Trade officials on both sides of the border point to so-called sequestration, massive cuts to a host of American federal agencies, as the sudden villain in Canada-US relations.

The cuts, aimed at slashing the mammoth $16.8 trillion US national debt, have left federal departments strapped for cash and resources and looking for ways to raise revenues.

“In both instances, it’s clear that the driving force is sequestration and that it will continue to have an impact on border agency resources,” Matthiesen said.

“And neither fee proposal at this point makes any mention of assessing fees based on risk or distinctions for our best corporate citizens.”

In an e-mail to members, the CME raised the alarm about the notion of USDA fee increases, which would be charged to carriers—trucking and shipping companies, airlines and railways.

“Given the volume, nature and immediacy of our cross-border trade, this new fee analysis is troubling,” the e-mail read.

It pointed out that the USDA recommendations made no distinction for country of origin, meaning Canada once again could get lumped in with myriad other nations despite the integration of the US and Canadian economies.

The next step will involve the USDA submitting its proposals to the Office of Management and Budget, and then to move forward with formal recommendations in the weeks to come.

In February, CBSA held a meeting of its Border Commercial Consultative Committee (BCCC) to review many of the new programs. Minutes of the meeting (which have been made public this week) reveal that work is far from completed on the new border policies. In fact, a number of new programs are in the works. Chief among them is the Cargo Control and Sufferance Warehouse Modernization (CCSWM) initiative.

According to the report, the goal of the initiative is to “eliminate the concept of sufferance warehouses, automate all functions, and reduce the types of warehouses from 14 to two.”

Sufferance warehouses are privately owned and operated facilities licensed by the CBSA for the short-term storage of imported goods not yet released by the CBSA. Typically goods stored in a sufferance warehouse must have a security bond posted and can only remain in the facility for up to 40 days.

At this point, the details of the plan have not been finalized, but a Customs notice, published by the CBSA, describes in a bit more detail what the agency expects the new approach to be. Once implemented, CCSWM will allow “carriers who accept the liability for the goods…to move unreleased, secured cargo in-land directly to their own or a shared CBSA-registered warehouse.”

The notice also explains that “all imported shipments will continue to be risk-assessed by the CBSA at the First Point of Arrival (FPOA) for reasons of health, safety and security. In-land examinations will be conducted at designated locations instead of at each warehouse facility.”

CBSA says it is considering five key changes to the current sufferance warehouse program. They are:

• revising the licensing process;
• reducing the number and types of warehouse designations;
• removing certain restrictions including storage time-limits, class of goods requirements, facilities access, and allowable cargo activities;
• allowing operators to co-store domestic and in-bond goods in the same part of the warehouse;
• establishing integrated examination facilities for the purpose of inland CBSA examinations;
• requiring warehouse operators to use electronic data interchange (EDI) when communicating with the CBSA.
  

Besides CCSWM news, the minutes revealed a number of other actions, promises and initiatives the CBSA has committed to addressing. Some of these include:

• promising to examine LVS issues (for example the difference in value between Canada and the United States for remission orders and the classification to 10 digits);
• engaging with the US in an ongoing dialogue about the control and regulation of wood packaging materials used in cross-border shipments;
• issuing a report on border fees at the next BCCC meeting;
• completing the integration of regional targeting units into the National Border Targeting Centre (NTC) by the end of 2013. (CBSA says this should better allow officers to make assessments about high-risk shipments. In addition, the agency has developed a national targeting training program and is using the program to train its officers.);
• examining the possibility of rewarding early eManifest adopters.

It also committed to clarifying the issue of fines—known as administrative monetary penalties (AMPs)—imposed on trucking companies that don’t provide CBSA with documentation under the Advance Commercial Information (ACI) program. Three action items in the minutes indicate the CBSA promises to:

• to examine removing zero-rated pre-arrival AMPs from a party’s record after the grace period;
• provide clear examples for the different types of AMPs;
  
• examine the question of where responsibility lies if a risk assessment is performed on incorrect information.

The accident occurred before 7:00AM (0400GMT) approximately 125km southwest of the southern Peloponnese peninsula, a Merchant Marine Ministry statement said.

It was not immediately clear what caused the collision between the Antigua-flagged Consouth and the Cook Islands-flagged Piri Reis in the Mediterranean Sea.

Weather conditions were good at the time, which facilitated rescue efforts involving coast guard vessels, merchant ships, a rescue helicopter and an airforce C-130 transport plane.

The Piri Reis, which was carrying a cargo of fertilizer to a Ukrainian port, sank, and seven of its crew of 17 Syrian seamen were rescued. Two bodies were pulled out of the sea a few hours after the collision.

The Consouth, sailing without freight from Turkey to Malta, had 16 Russian, Filippino and Polish seamen on board, all who were unhurt, the ministry said.

The strike by airline technicians and service personnel across Germany started in the early hours. Lufthansa moved in advance to head off chaos, announcing on Saturday that it was cancelling almost all scheduled short-haul flights and the majority of long-haul services.

In all, the airline planned to operate only 32 of more than 1,700 scheduled flights.

The ver.di union announced the “warning strike”—a tactic commonly used to raise pressure in wage talks —on Friday. Lufthansa last week rejected its demand for wage increases of 5.2 percent over the next year and job guarantees, countering with a complex offer that foresees smaller raises over a 29-month period. Ver.di, which is negotiating for some 33,000 workers, argued that the offer would mean wages falling in real terms.

“We demand that we definitely get a pay rise … and we are not willing to accept increased working hours,” said Brigitte Scheffler, a Lufthansa employee at Berlin’s Tegel airport.

Ver.di official Gerold Schaub told n-tv television that the union had “no other possibility” to exert pressure on Lufthansa management, and noted that it was the airline itself that decided to scrap more than 1,600 flights.

Lufthansa is trying to cut costs to cope with high fuel prices as well as vigorous competition from European discount carriers and the big Gulf airlines such as Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways. Last year, the airline and a union representing cabin crews called in an arbitrator to settle a pay dispute after a series of short-term stoppages.

Lufthansa charged that ver.di, Germany’s biggest service workers’ union, was motivated by a desire to shore up its position in an increasingly fragmented union landscape in which assertive smaller groups representing individual professions have become more and more powerful. Monday’s strike followed a smaller walkout last month.

“This time it is a strike … with a massive impact, completely excessive, that has only one aim—to position itself as a union at Lufthansa against many other unions and groups,” Lufthansa’s chief personnel officer, Stefan Lauer, told ARD television. He put the number of passengers affected at 150,000.

Lauer complained that “the transport sector has mutated into a strike sector” and said that “we as Lufthansa now have to suffer strikes every three months,” often by unions representing non-Lufthansa workers such as air traffic controllers and airport security staff.

The German national employers’ association has called for government action to rein in the problem of companies facing demands from competing unions but, while Chancellor Angela Merkel has expressed sympathy for their concern, little has happened.

The 195 smelters have not only been named, but HP says they have been independently reviewed under Electronic Industry Citizenship Coaltion (EICC) guidelines. The EICC is an industry body that promotes socially, environmentally and economically responsible practices in the electronics industry supply chain. In particular, HP’s suppliers have been vetted under the Conflict-Free Smelter (CFS) program. HP is an EICC member.

The EICC describes CFS as “a voluntary program in which an independent third party evaluates a smelter’s procurement activities and determines if the smelter demonstrated that all the materials they processed originated from conflict-free sources.

“The CFS assessments cover smelters processing tin, tungsten, tantalum, and refiners processing gold. The assessments are conducted globally for any smelter who is processing the targeted minerals and wants to be identified as a conflict-free smelter.”

In publishing the list, HP put a special emphasis on its efforts to obtain conflict-free minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

“For more than a decade, the mining of minerals used to produce tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold (3TG) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been linked to the funding of armed groups waging a civil war in the country. These metals are widely used in many industries and are commonly found in electronic products,” explained HP in a statement.

“As part of its commitment to work toward solutions in the DRC and neighboring countries, HP has been active with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), industry organizations and government entities, including the Enough Project, the US State Department and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.”

Tony Prophet, HP’s senior vice-president of supply chain operations in the printers and personal systems group, said the company is “committed to collaborating across our supply chain as well as with NGOs and industry organizations to drive responsible sourcing within the Democratic Republic of the Congo and achieve a conflict-free supply chain.”

In addition to the smelter list, HP also made available the names and addresses of its final assembly suppliers.

The smelter list—which includes three Canadian organizations (the Royal Canadian Mint, Xstrata Canada Corp and Johnson Matthey Limited) be found here. The assembly suppliers list is here.

Once the presidential permit was granted (a requirement for all US border-crossing projects with other countries) Michigan governor Rick Snyder held a press conference at James Group International, an inventory consolidation and logistics service provider located in Detroit. There, with an assortment of US and Canadian officials in attendance—including Canadian labour minister Lisa Raitt, and Essex MP Jeff Watson—Snyder announced that the long delayed project, currently known as the Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC)/New International Trade Crossing (NITC,) was ready to proceed.

The next steps to creating a new span involve acquiring property in Michigan (either by purchasing it or appropriating it) and relocating utilities. Then, further work must be done on the design concept. Initial plans call for the structure to have six lanes, state-of-the-art inspection plazas, and easy access to the Interstate 75 highway via an interchange.

Raitt welcomed the announcement and issued a statement on behalf of the Canadian government.

“Canada and the United States are each others most important trading partners. The presidential permit represents an important step towards a new bridge which will be needed for growing trade and traffic at the busiest Canada-US commercial border crossing with over 8,000 trucks crossing each day.”

Comments also came from businesses and organizations that rely depend on border crossings for their businesses.

Chrysler Group issued a statement saying it “appreciates the strong leadership that US and Canadian government officials have demonstrated in the effort to secure a new international crossing…Ensuring a smooth crossing for both companies and people is essential to our just-in-time manufacturing process.”

Chrysler makes more than 1,600 Customs entries across the border every day as it moves 2,000 cars and trucks across the border.

The Canadian Vehicle Manufacturer’s Association (CVMA) also signaled its support of the project’s advancement.

“With the approval of the Presidential Permit, the new international trade crossing (NITC) is on the road to completion and needs to proceed without delay. A state-of-the-art, highly efficient, effective and reliable new crossing with improved flow of goods is essential to maintaining our competitive place in global markets,” said Mark Nantais, president of the CVMA.

While the Ontario and the federal governments have long been in favour of creating a new crossing (the federal government included the regulatory framework for it in the 2012 budget, and offered to finance the entire cost of the billion-dollar bridge), support on the American side of the border had been harder to come by.

In particular, Manuel “Matty” Moroun, who controls the Detroit International Bridge Co, the company that owns and operates the Ambassador Bridge, has offered fierce resistance to the project. He has done everything from running advertising campaigns against the bridge to launching lawsuits to prevent its construction.

Willy Brandt International Airport, named for Germany’s famed Cold War leader, was supposed to have been up and running in late 2011, a sign of Berlin’s transformation from Cold War confrontation line to world class capital of Europe’s economic powerhouse. Instead it has become a symbol of how, even for this technological titan, things can go horribly wrong.

After four publicly announced delays, officials acknowledged the airport won’t be ready by the latest target: October 2013. To spare themselves further embarrassment, officials have refused to set a new opening date.

The saga of Berlin’s new airport has turned into a national joke and a source of humiliation for a people renowned for being on time. Yet it is just the highest profile in a string of big-ticket projects—including a concert hall in Hamburg, railway tunnels in Munich and Leipzig, a subway line in Cologne and a Stuttgart underground train station—that have been plagued by huge cost overruns and delays.

The airport fiasco presents a staggering picture of incompetence.

German media have tracked down a list of tens of thousands of technical problems; among them: officials can’t even figure out how to turn the lights off. Thousands of light bulbs illuminate the gigantic main terminal and unused parking lots around the clock, a massive energy and cost drain that appears to be the result of a computer system that’s so sophisticated it’s almost impossible to operate.

Every day, an empty commuter train rolls to the unfinished airport over an eight kilometre stretch to keep the newly-laid tracks from getting rusty, another example of gross inefficiency. Meanwhile, hundreds of freshly planted trees had to be chopped down because a company delivered the wrong type of linden trees; several escalators need to be rebuilt because they were too short; and dozen of tiles were already broken before a single airport passenger ever stepped on them.

The airport itself points to problems with the fire safety system as the immediate cause of the delays: The fire safety system incorporates some 75,000 sprinklers, but computer programming glitches mean it’s not clear whether all of these sprinklers would spray enough water during a fire. And the system’s underground vent system, designed to suck away smoke, isn’t working. Here, again, technology’s getting in the way: It’s so advanced that technicians can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.

Critics say that the difficulties with handling today’s complex technology have been compounded by hasty, negligent work due to the intense time pressures.

Underlying these problems appears to be a culture of political dishonesty.

“Many politicians want prestigious large-scale projects to be inseparably connected with their names,” said Sebastian Panknin, a financial expert with the Taxpayer’s Association Germany. “To get these expensive projects started, they artificially calculate down the real costs to get permission from parliament or other committees in charge.”

In addition to that, politicians at the city, state and federal levels then often come with extra demands once construction is underway, which leads to expensive modifications. In the case of the Berlin airport, said Pankin, there were about 300 ad hoc change requests by politicians which created an explosion of costs and several delays—among them a last-minute wish to expand the terminal to include a shopping mall.

Hamburg’s concert hall was to have opened by 2010. Instead it’s nowhere near complete and costs have more than doubled to 575 million euros. It’s now due to open in 2016.

Construction on Cologne’s North-South subway line began in 2004. After cost overruns and a collapse that killed two people in 2009, officials say the entire line may not be open until 2019. Costs have soared from 780 million to 1.08 billion euros.

In Leipzig, the city tunnel for commuter trains was expected to open in 2009. Construction is still not finished, and costs have jumped from 572 million to 960 million euros.

Of all the bungled projects, the Berlin airport is the biggest embarrassment.

The initial plan foresaw building a stately airport that would be financed by private investors and replace the city’s two Cold War airports: Tegel in former West Berlin and Schoenefeld in what was Communist East Berlin.

After a series of disputes with private investors, the city, state and federal governments eventually took over the airport project. In 2006, costs were estimated at two billion euros, but after four delays, the figure spiked to 4.4 billion euros.

Companies like Air Berlin, Germany’s second biggest carrier, have been severely affected by the delays and are suing for lost revenues. Small businesses like coffee shops, restaurants, retail stores or bus operators—who had already hired staff and invested in new stores at the airport—are facing bankruptcy.

Twitter users asked the mayor to “please open this gate,” playing off Ronald Reagan’s famous 1987 appeal to Moscow to “tear down” the Berlin Wall.

And by the time the airport finally opens, it may face a new headache.

Some aviation experts are warning that by its inauguration date, the airport will already be too small to handle the rising number of passengers. The nearly 360,000sqm airport complex was designed to handle 27 million passengers. But the existing two city airports handled 25 million passengers last year—and the city keeps attracting more visitors every year.

“The airport is too expensive, too small and too much behind time,” said aviation expert Dieter Faulenbach da Costa, who recently caused a stir when he proposed that the airport ought to be torn down.

In an effort to salvage the mess, Hartmut Mehdorn, the hardnosed former boss of the German railway system with a reputation for turning around failing corporations, was named chief executive of the airport in early March.

“The whole world says: it’s not possible at all,” Mehdorn said when he took over. “I say: It should be possible.

“I just don’t know how yet.”

The stoppage in the world’s top copper producing nation began in the northern port of Angamos more than two weeks ago, when workers began demanding a 30-minute lunch break and a place to set up a cafeteria. Dockworkers in other northern ports have joined in solidarity, causing huge losses for the mining, timber and fruit industries in export-dependent Chile.

“The jobs of hundreds of thousands of Chileans are being jeopardized,” finance minister Felipe Larrain. “I’m urging (workers) to be responsible and solve this problem soon.”

Chile produces about a third of the world’s copper and its stable economy is largely built around exports of minerals. The red metal alone accounts for roughly a third of government revenue, and the state has a policy of shoring up national reserves during periods of high copper prices.

Mining also offers many of the country’s poor their best shot at a middle-class life, especially in the largely rural and rugged desert areas of northern Chile, where the majority of mines are located.

Mining minister Hernan de Solminihac said the ports affected are used to transport 60 percent of all copper shipments. Officials at the state-owned mining company Codelco said about 60,000 tonnes of the company’s copper has been stuck at port and it has lost more than $500 million since the strike began 21 days ago.

Chile is also a major global exporter of wine, salmon and fruit and the strikes are prompting concerns among state officials and industry leaders about the effect on the harvest. The Andean country’s agricultural sector accounts for 800,000 jobs, or more than 10 percent of all employment, according to the government. Of those, 350,000 people work in the fruit sector, thousands of them as owners of their own farms.

“This can mean bankruptcy for many of them,” agriculture minister Luis Mayol said in a joint press conference with the finance minister.

Unionists at the Angamos port said in a statement that the stoppage is due to “labour neglect” by Ultraport, a company that specializes in freight handling and management at 20 Chilean ports.

Meanwhile, companies are running out of space to store cargo and fruit could start to rot with no end in sight for the lingering strikes.

Ronald Bown, the president of Chile’s Export Association, told local radio that growers will temporarily stop harvesting in the central-south region Friday because there’s no more space to store fruit.

“This is affecting medium and small-scale farmers,” Bown said. “Many of them have their future on the line this season.”

Fruit trade group Fedefruta said 1,600 containers are grounded at the San Antonio port. The company losses there total about $50 million up to now but could rise to $400 million if the stoppage continues throughout April.

“The year’s work of more than 30,000 growers is being lost in a few days,” said Fedefruta president Cristian Allendes.

Several timber companies have also suspended shipments.

Another step has been taken to streamline the movement of goods and cargo across the Canada-US border.

Working under the mandate of the Beyond the Border Declaration, which was signed by Stephen Harper and Barack Obama, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the US Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) have harmonized their low-value shipment (LVS) thresholds on goods destined for expedited Customs clearance.

As of January 8, the LVS threshold is now $2,500 in both Canada and the US. This marks a significant change in policy; prior to harmonization, the Canadian level was set at $1,600 and while the US limit was $2,000. In addition, Canada also agreed to increase the LVS threshold to $2,500 for exemption from NAFTA Certificate of Origin requirements, which parallels the US threshold.

LVS goods receive an automatically triggered release with payment for duties and taxes not coming due until the following month. That’s in contrast to high-value shipments, which need to go through a CBSA release process. The CBSA also requires payments for high-value shipment duties and taxes to be made within five days.
According to estimates provided by a CBSA spokesperson, “an increase in the LVS threshold to $2,500 will result in approximately 1.5 million shipments being transferred from the regular import stream to the Courier LVS Program, increasing its yearly volume to 36.3 million shipments.

Accordingly, the regular import stream is expected to see a decrease of 1.5 million shipments.

“Because the Courier LVS Program is an expedited and simplified release process, importers will benefit from decreased costs and LVS will simplify the import process and reduce administrative burden. The increase will facilitate trade, allowing 1.5 million shipments to be cleared on the day of arrival.”

CBSA says the other main advantage for shippers is the potential to reduce costs as it will “decrease the number of penalties imposed on importers because more shipments qualify for the LVS extended accounting timeframe, thereby affording importers additional time to formally account for their goods.

The decision was well-received in the industry, said Cristina Falcone, vice-president of public affairs for Mississauga, Ontario-based UPS Canada, in an interview with MM&D.

“It’s a positive change, not only for the carriers but also for Canadian importers because it provides additional certainty that goods that are moving across the border are going to be able to continue in their flow and be delivered on a timely basis without worries about ‘on-holds’ for Customs reasons,” she said.

“With values under $2,500, typically they are low-risk shipments, so it maintains security at the border, but it also keeps the flow of trade moving, which also improves the competitiveness for both Canadian and American businesses, as they have improved speed to market.”

Several hundred dockworkers and supporters camped out on the road in front of a container terminal. The workers are demanding a 20 percent pay raise to make up for pay cuts in past years, but subcontractors supplying labour to port operators are only offering five percent.

Hutchison International Terminals operates the terminal where the workers are striking. Officials say the action is costing the company five million Hong Kong dollars ($652,800) per day.

The company has distanced itself from the dispute, saying the stevedores are not Hutchison employees. It said terminal operations are continuing but truck traffic in the area where the strikers are camped has slowed down.

The workers want Hutchison to negotiate directly with their union—the Union of Hong Kong Dockers (UHKD)—about pay. They’re also demanding resolution of some health and safety problems, such as lack of bathroom breaks.

Hong Kong is the world’s third busiest port by container volume, behind the mainland Chinese cities of Shanghai and Shenzhen, according to World Shipping Council data.

“There are some disruptions, particularly for the importers,” which are seeing some shipments of perishable goods like fruit rot because they’re sitting on the dock longer, said Willy Lin, chair of the Hong Kong Shippers’ Council. “On the export side it’s slower to get the containers out of the terminals.”

Lin said he has heard truck drivers are one- to three-hours late picking up and dropping off shipments because of the strike, but “so far we haven’t seen major disruptions”.

The Shippers’ Council, which represents importers, exporters and manufacturers, has advised its members to arrange backup plans in case the strike drags on, including having shipments move through other ports in China, such as nearby Shenzhen.

Some shipping companies are already taking precautions. Japan’s Mitsui OSK Lines reported several delays and diverted two ships away from Hong Kong because of the strike. The company said a Europe-bound ship would skip the city and instead stop in Vietnam, where Hong Kong cargo would be transferred to another ship to reach its final destination.

Hong Kong is a major transfer point for goods coming in and out of mainland China. It was the world’s busiest port for years, handling shipments of jeans, shoes and electronics manufactured in southern China’s Pearl River Delta for export to consumers in the West. But it has been overtaken by Shanghai and Shenzhen in recent years.

Lin said Hong Kong’s port still holds an edge over its rivals in mainland China because it’s faster and more efficient. Hong Kong can turn around a container in 18-22 hours while Shenzhen needs 24, he said.

Lin said other regional rivals around Asia such as Singapore, Busan in South Korea and Kaohsiung in Taiwan “all want a slice of this pie” and the dispute will hurt Hong Kong’s image as a dependable port if it drags on.

Hutchison operates 12 berths at four of Hong Kong’s nine container terminals and two others with a joint venture partner. The company is controlled by Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.

While many of the upgrades should improve the flow of passenger traffic, some enhancements are designed with commercial crossings in mind. In particular, the Lansdowne Port of Entry at the Thousand Islands Bridge in Ontario (40km east of Kingston), should see some improvements to its cross-border cargo flow once the upgrades are completed. A new Canada Border Services Agency inspection plaza is being built, roadways are being improved, and five extra primary inspection lanes are being added, with two of those lanes being dedicated to commercial traffic. The total cost for the improvements is estimated to be $60 million.

The funds for the upgrade are part of the $2.1 billion Gateways and Border Crossings Fund (GBCF). The government has earmarked this money for infrastructure projects that “increase the productivity and efficiency of strategic transportation assets of national significance, such as bridges, roads and ports, which are part of international gateways, strategic trade corridors and key land border crossings.”

Construction at the Lansdowne Crossing is scheduled to start in 2015. It should be completed in two years.

In 2012 over $14 billion in two-way trade flowed across the Lansdowne Crossing.

The other border improvement projects announced recently are:

North Portal Border Crossing (Saskatchewan)

• $10 million to expand and modernize the CBSA facility, expand and re-align the commercial staging area and commercial traffic lanes, and reconfigure and expand the border crossing roadways.
• Construction will start in 2014 and last for two years.

Emerson Border Crossing (Manitoba)

• $10 million for infrastructure upgrades, including improvements to the CBSA inspection facility.
• The funding also covers the cost of a study being conducted by the province of Manitoba and the state of North Dakota examining methods of reducing congestion and improving traffic flow.
• Construction will begin in 2015 and is expected to take two years to complete.

Lacolle Border Crossing (Quebec)

• $47 million for upgrades to improve the movement of travellers, including expanding the number of traveller lanes from nine (eight plus one NEXUS lane) to 15 (13 plus two NEXUS lanes) and upgrading the infrastructure.
• Construction will begin this year and take three years to complete.

Documents obtained by the Canadian Press show Canada is pushing hard to outlaw the discharge of oily wastes or garbage anywhere in the North.

Canada’s proposal, during negotiations for a mandatory global shipping code in the Arctic, has won the support of several countries including Germany and France—whose citizens often criticize Canada over issues of climate change and management of wildlife such as seals and polar bears.

“Canada actually took quite good leadership on this issue,” said Lars Erik Mangset of the World Wildlife Fund, which was an official observer at the talks held late March in London.

Countries belonging to the International Maritime Organization have been working to thrash out a mandatory code of conduct for shipping in Arctic waters, as climate change makes the formerly ice-choked seas more accessible. The talks involve everything from the safety of sailors and construction standards for ships, to rules to protect the delicate Arctic environment.

Forecasts suggest Arctic shipping will continue to grow over the coming decades in both volume and type—everything from huge ore carriers to cruise ships carrying thousands of tourists.

Last September, an informal meeting in Washington of countries involved in the talks produced a document outlining minimum standards on environmental protection.

“It aims quite low,” said Mangset in an interview from Oslo, Norway.

In London, Canadian negotiators proposed much higher standards, based on Canadian legislation that has been in place since 1970. Those rules—similar to those in place for the Antarctic—forbid discharging oil, oily waste, or any kind of garbage into Canadian Arctic waters.

“The Canadian and Antarctic experience demonstrates that a zero discharge standard is practicable,” says the Canadian proposal.

“The Canadian experience also shows that it is not a significant barrier to cost-effective shipping, for purposes ranging from community supply to resource development and limited but growing through-traffic.”

Transport Canada, the department responsible for the negotiations, said the proposal is intended to ensure standards around the circumpolar world match those already in place in Canada.

“Canada continues to support the development of an international polar code that will provide an equivalent level of safety and environmental protection to our law,” said spokeswoman Kelly James.

Although Canada’s proposal was not formally tabled, it garnered enough support to make its way into recommendations that will now go meetings of the Marine Environment Protection Committee.

Those recommendations suggest dumping oil, oily waste or garbage into any part of the Arctic be against international law.

The next talks take place in May.

Although the polar code was supposed to be in place already, Mangset said the earliest talks could end is 2014, followed by an 18-month implementation period.

Shippers now operate in the Arctic under guidelines developed by the International Maritime Organization, as well as a welter of rules and benchmarks developed by other bodies.

The polar code, being negotiated under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization, is intended to bring all those issues under the same agreement.

The 94-car mixed cargo train was headed south near Parkers Prairie en route to Chicago, Illinois, when it lost air pressure and went into an emergency braking mode, the Otter Tail County sheriff’s office said. Fourteen tankers derailed. Three either leaked or spilled oil. No one was hurt, and a spokesman for the state’s pollution control agency said crews were able to control the spill.

It is estimated between 76,000 to 113,000 litres (20,000 to 30,000 gallons) leaked onto the ground, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency spokesman Dan Olson said.

The spill was contained in a field and ditch in a rural area, and the cold weather helped keep the spill contained and prevented oil from moving down the ditch or into the ground, Olson said.

One heavily damaged car spilled much of its 98,420 litres (26,000 gallon) load, Olson said. He said the oil was “just oozing out” in the cold.

Because the ground is frozen, there’s no threat to water, Olson said. Initial recovery efforts likely will take a day or two, and excavations then will be done to determine if any oil leaked into the soil, he said.

The railroad was cleaning up the spill, CP spokesman Ed Greenberg said.

While the spill appeared to be under control from an ecological standpoint, it could play a role in the politics surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport oil from tar sands in Canada to refineries in Texas.

Environmentalists have criticized the proposal, saying that a pipeline could be prone to spills and would ensure that the carbon-laden tar sands are fully developed.

A recent analysis from the State Department seemed to knock down one of their arguments, by saying that when it comes to global warming, shipping the oil by pipeline would release less pollution than using rail.

Greenberg said he did not know if the oil that spilled from the oil sands.

Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, named after the president, was officially opened in his native district of Hambantota, 165km (102mi) southeast of the capital, Colombo.

Following the end of the war in 2009, Rajapaksa’s government has invested heavily in infrastructure development, with special emphasis on his district. The $209 million airport is the third big recent infrastructure project in Hambantota after a seaport and an international cricket stadium. The government plans to promote Hambantota—which is close to a busy sea route—as a “sea air trans-shipment hub.”

Built with a Chinese loan, the airport has an initial capacity of one million passengers a year. It can handle 30,000 aircraft movements and 45,000 tonnes of cargo annually.

The country’s opposition has criticized the construction of both port and airport in Hambantota as a waste of money, saying they are not economically viable. Opposition lawmaker and Tissa Attanayake of the United National Party said the projects were built only to boost the image of Rajapaksa.

Officials say that besides acting as a cargo hub, the airport would cater to the growing tourism industry as it is located close to several rich wildlife and bird sanctuaries, heritage sites and also to beaches with year-round sunshine. The government has set a target of wooing 2.6 million tourist arrivals to the country by 2016, up from the one million tourists who arrived last year.

The project covers 2,000 hectares and after a second phase it completed, the airport will be able to handle five million passengers a year and 150,000 tonnes of cargo. A date for the second phase has not been announced.

Sri Lanka’s main international airport is the Bandaranaike International Airport just outside of Colombo.

WASHINGTON, DC—The US Federal Maritime Commission has agreed to allow the G6 Alliance to go into effect in the US, thereby removing one roadblock to the group’s plan of a May 2013 service launch.

The G6 Alliance was formed by half-a-dozen shipping companies in December 2011, and it formally began operations in March 2012. The member companies are American President Lines Ltd (APL), Hapag-Lloyd Aktiengesellschaft (Hapag-Lloyd), Hyundai Merchant Marine Company, Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL), Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK), and Orient Overseas Container Line Limited (OOCL). In its essence, it is a vessel sharing agreement between the members of the New World Alliance (APL, Hyundai and MOL) and the Grand Alliance (Hapag-Lloyd, NYK and OOCL). Originally it covered co-operation between members on Asia-Europe routings.

G6′s expansion plans call for a similar approach to be taken for Asia-North America—specifically Eastern North America—services.

In getting approval from the FMC, the alliance has been given permission member shipping companies permission to “charter and exchange space on the parties’ vessels” and “co-ordinate and co-operate with respect to the parties’ transportation services and operations in specific trade lanes”.

Beginning in May, the G6 Alliance intends to deploy over 50 ships in trans-Pacific trade. Those vessels will call on nearly 30 ports. The agreement covers the east coast of Canada, the east coast of the US, Egypt, Hong Kong, Italy, Jamaica, Malaysia, Panama, People’s Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam. Half the services will travel through the Panama Canal and half will utilize the Suez Canal.

While it has approved the agreement, the FMC is not taking a hands-off approach to the G6′s presence. The commission intends to create a monitoring program to track the alliance’s activities and perform early detection of capacity coordination among carriers and agreements operating in the market.

Carisbrooke Shipping Ltd of the United Kingdom issued a statement saying the men had been released after the February 7 attack on the MV Esther C.

“The three officers were confirmed as being safe and in good spirits on March 11 after 31 days in captivity,” the company said.

The company did not say whether a ransom had been paid to secure the sailors’ freedom. Such kidnappings typically end with a ransom payment being made, usually in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Pirates attacked the vessel some 130 kilometres (80 miles) off Nigeria’s coast. The company previously said the pirates stole the sailors’ personal belongings before leaving with the three sailors.

Russia’s foreign ministry previously identified two of the sailors as being Russians.

The attack on the cargo ship came in a series of escalating assaults in the Gulf of Guinea, which follows the African continent’s southward curve from Liberia to Gabon.

Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea has escalated from low-level armed robberies to hijackings and cargo thefts. Last year, London-based Lloyd’s Market Association—an umbrella group of insurers—listed Nigeria, neighbouring Benin and nearby waters in the same risk category as Somalia, where two decades of war and anarchy allowed piracy to flourish. But as piracy has dropped in recent months off Somalia’s coast, it’s only risen in the Gulf of Guinea.

Pirates in West Africa also have been more willing to use violence in their robberies, as they often target the cargo, not the crew for ransom as is the case off Somalia. Experts say many of the pirates come from Nigeria, where corrupt law enforcement allows criminality to thrive and there’s a bustling black market for stolen crude oil.

Plans call for the building of five parallel rail tracks, a two-lane roadway, and a port-owned power distribution centre, all to be located in an eight-kilometre corridor.

The infrastructure development is being viewed as a catalyst to spur the building of new terminals on Ridley Island to handle 13 million tonnes of potash for Saskatchewan-based Canpotex and liquefied natural gas (LNG) for the UK-based BG Group. The Port Authority’s Gateway 20/20 Plan projects an annual throughput capacity of 100 million tonnes of cargo as proposed terminal developments are completed.

Phase one of the construction process is scheduled to be completed by December 2014. The cost of the road, rail and utility corridor is $90 million, with funding responsibility split between the public and private sectors. The federal government and BC provincial governments are each contributing $15 million, while $30 million is being committed by both CN and the Port Authority.

Those figures, however, pale in comparison to the projected costs to build the terminals themselves. Estimates for the capital costs related to the construction of the terminals range into the billions of dollars.

“This project will connect Canada’s proven capacity for resource production to growing markets in the Asia-Pacific region and is the largest in Prince Rupert since construction of the Fairview Container Terminal,” said Bud Smith, chair of the board of the Prince Rupert Port Authority.

“This project in Prince Rupert will give us more capacity to serve booming markets in Asia. By working with our government and private sector partners we can continue to lead the competitive race for Asia Pacific trade as the preferred Gateway to North America,” said British Columbia’s transportation and infrastructure minister Mary Polak.

CN general manager Doug Ryhorchuk, explained why the railway is involved in the project.

“The growing awareness of Prince Rupert as a North American gateway to Asia has created global interest in the port and the northwest region for investment and commerce. CN’s investment in the Road, Rail and Utility Corridor will strategically add export capacity and help strengthen the infrastructure to get Canadian goods to market”

Construction of the corridor will create 90 jobs during the two-year construction phase. The project’s contractor is Prince Rupert Constructors, a joint venture between Coast Tsimshian Enterprises (a local First Nations firm), JJM Construction Ltd, and Emil Anderson Construction Inc.