Posted on January 4, 2018
By Denis Langlois, Sun Times, Owen Sound
The city has begun active negotiations with Transport Canada towards a possible city takeover of the federally owned Owen Sound harbour.
City manager Wayne Ritchie said Owen Sound has been given up to six months to negotiate and make its decision.
“The stage we were at before was the very preliminary stage where our consultants were looking at various studies that have been done on the port over many years and helping us decide if we even had enough interest to move ahead to put in a proposal,” he said in an interview Thursday.
“Based on what they have told us, yes, we do have that interest. So we’ve put in a proposal and now we’re getting down to negotiations.”
The proposal includes the city’s vision for the harbour, which Ritchie said would be to continue to operate it as a mixed-use port “very similar to the way the port has been run for many years now.”
Negotiations, he said, will provide the city with a clear picture of the risks associated with owning the harbour and the costs to maintain it.
But he said it’s important to keep in mind that entering this stage of the divestiture process does not guarantee that Owen Sound will, in the end, assume ownership of the harbour.
“We’re now entering into negotiations to see if there can be terms and conditions under which we would receive it,” Ritchie said.
“But we’re still a long way from the City of Owen Sound receiving the port. There’s a lot of considerations. Council has to understand the risks and can they be mitigated?
“We want to see this process through to conclusion – whether that conclusion is Owen Sound receiving the port or the City of Owen Sound deciding that it’s not in the citizen’s best interest to receive it.”
Owen Sound began lobbying the federal government in 2001 to pay for dredging the harbour to assist commercial shipping activities. The government’s position has been that dredging must be linked with divestiture.
Transport Canada has engaged in divestiture talks before with local parties.
It did so with the city in 2007 and with Parrish & Heimbecker, owner of the Owen Sound grain elevators, in 2013. Both discussions ended without an agreement.
Transport Canada launched a new program in 2015 for selling and divesting many of its ports. The Owen Sound harbour was one of 50 listed as available under the Ports Asset Transfer Program.
The local port, the agency says, includes a 1,241-metre west harbour wall and 1,143-m east harbour wall.
City council voted in early 2016 to notify Transport Canada that the city does not want to buy the harbour, but is interested in participating in divestiture talks.
A few months later, the city signed a disclosure of information agreement with Transport Canada, which allowed the city to begin the divestiture phase of the Ports Asset Transfer Program.
Council directed city officials this summer to sign an agreement with Transport Canada that would see the agency covering 100 per cent of the costs, up to $117,475, for the city to obtain a more detailed examination of the harbour by environmental engineers from Oakville-based Pollutech Group as well as an eco-toxicity study by Trent University.
Ritchie, at the time, said the analyses would provide the city with updated information on whether or not the harbour can be dredged in an environmentally friendly manner, along with the cost to dredge the port and any potential impacts of dredging on the local ecosystem.
Transport Canada published a “public notice” in Thursday’s Sun Times that says the federal agency will begin negotiations to transfer the Owen Sound Port Facility to the Corporation of the City of Owen Sound.
“The negotiation process for the potential transfer of the Owen Sound Public Port Facility involves sharing data related to this facility and addressing specific terms and conditions for the transfer of the port that must be agreed upon by both parties,” Transport Canada spokeswoman Julie Leroux said in an e-mailed response to a reporter’s questions Thursday.
Source: Sun Times, Owen Sound
