Today’s Chronicle-Herald reports that China Shipping is shutting down its Halifax operation, pulling the rug out from under the “Atlantica” idea of turning Halifax into a mega middleman port for the importation of Chinese goods into the American Midwest.
Of course, anyone with any sense and a halfway decent map can see that Halifax isn’t remotely close to being in-between China and Chicago. So in order to sell Atlantica, its backers created an amzaing, if improbable story: shippers would find west coast ports clogged up with backlogs, and so instead would send ships all the way around the world, through the Suez canal. They wouldn’t worry about making the sea journey ten times as long by circling the globe, but at the tail end of the journey, they would go bonkers trying to shave off a few hundred kilometres from the trip, so they’d dock in Halifax instead of Norfolk or New York. And never mind that west coast cities are dumping billions of dollars into port expansion to handle increased traffic– if we wish hard enough, all of this will come true, facts be damned.
Even though they know the mega middleman port thing is dead, dead, dead, don’t expect to hear any of the movers and shakers in town to distance themselves from Atlantica. No, they’ll be certain to keep the fantasy alive. Here’s Doug Rose, head honcho at the Halifax Terminal (quoted in the Chronicle-Herald):
“…China Shipping was growing substantially and by all accounts they were really happy with the performance of Halterm and the port as a whole.”
What the net effect will be in terms of lost cargo to the port will not be known for some time, he said.
China Shipping is a big company with a lot of opportunities to grow, so Mr. Rose is hoping it will return to Halifax “sooner rather than later with some kind of a service from the Far East through the Suez.”
Why keep the Atlantica dream alive? Because it was never primarily about the shipping in the first place, but rather all the assorted policy decisions that flow from the supposed increase in shipping: cuts in mimimum wages and government funding for social programs, attacks on unions, and increases in government subsidies for big business in the way of increased road-building, reduction of safety and environmental regulations and so forth.
Those policy aims drive Atlantica, not the other way around. So expect every big biz promoter and corporate-shilling politician in town to come out in coming days to explain why Atlantica is still teh hot.
We know better.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2007.
