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The fall issue of the Forwarder Magazine, published twice yearly, is now available and has been mailed out. The Forwarder Magazine is Canada’s only dedicated magazine for freight forwarders, load brokers, and cartage companies. Each edition contains original content on the issues affecting logistics professionals. The magazine celebrates the achievements of its member firms and their employees.

(View Fall 2021 Forwarder Magazine )

New this year, CIFFA is accepting freight brokers into our regular membership category. CIFFA offers numerous benefits to its North American Freight Brokers and Transportation based 3PLs.

Whatever your role in the movement of goods, the Canadian International Freight Forwarders Association is important. For transportation brokers, we offer support, advocacy, education and the stature of our world-class CIFFA brand. With a long track record of success, high standards, and strong relationships with various government bodies, a CIFFA membership guarantees that our industry and your business is well represented.

When people deal with a CIFFA freight broker, they know they’re working with trained professionals who:

• abide by the CIFFA Code of Ethics,
• carry cargo liability insurance,
• abide by the FMSCA surety bond requirement for cross border freight
• meet training requirements with respect to the handling of dangerous goods
• provide vocational training in all locations where international freight services are offered.

CIFFA Standard Trading Conditions (STCs), which can only be used by a CIFFA member, levels the playing field in Canada. These conditions, which govern the relationship between the CIFFA regular member firms and the customer, are regularly upheld in Canadian courts. Shippers can be assured that when they work with a CIFFA regular member firm, they are working within a proven set of trading conditions and have peace of mind.

A membership with CIFFA helps protect your business.

• North American Freight Brokers are represented on the CIFFA National Board of Directors, a key opportunity for involvement and input to help address the needs of Canadian 3PL’s
• CIFFA has established a North American Freight Broker Committee to address the issues and concerns of Canadian 3PL’s
• We have a newly drafted Canadian Brokers – Carrier contract available to only CIFFA member companies.

Take advantage of new opportunities and use of the CIFFA brand on websites, emails and other communications. This recognition provides business partners with confidence in dealing with a reputable company that abide by strict standards. Listing your business in the member directory offers you increased visibility to potential clients.

CIFFA boasts a strong education offering and professional development plan for your employees – from new hires to leadership roles:

• Partnerships with colleges across Canada who can assist with recruitment needs
• Training – Dangerous Goods, Air Cargo Security, industry relevant workshops
• We also play a strong role in advocacy as the trusted advisor to the freight forwarding community, with a dedicated CIFFA team who represent member concerns domestically and internationally, and a lobbyist who has direct access to government legislators on issues affecting the supply chain and related member interests.

Members may also be able to participate in various CIFFA committees (Sea freight, Air Freight, Customs Load Brokers, Drayage, etc.) , providing an interchange of ideas, input and collaboration and being part of a results-driven process.

At CIFFA, communication is key.

• Expert guidance on inquiries
• Access to the daily eBulletin highlighting industry news
• Access to The Forwarder print magazine distributed twice per year
• Press releases or Special eBulletin on urgent news

You will also have access to valuable offers within your membership, including:

• Member pricing on all events, education, and training
• Affinity Program offers savings through associate members, such as
• HR software resources and Home and Auto Insurance
• Member pricing on all advertising and sponsorship opportunities

* Complete details about CIFFA Membership Requirements, Fees and Application Guideline.

A CIFFA Member Survey was launched and the results finalized this June querying membership on various aspects of technology, including: freight management systems, business process automation, predictive analytics, digitization, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.

CIFFA Associate Member, Drew Simons of Roxville Technology Inc. drafted the survey and presented the summary to the CIFFA Technology Committee June 29.

In order to gather input, CIFFA invited 68 members to participate in the survey. The surveys were completed via Teams. Roxville used PowerPoint to share information and questions with the respondents. The source of the answers from members was anonymous, and members who participated received a copy of the full report.

CIFFA extends appreciation for the support and assistance of our members who contributed.

(Read Summary)

On July 2, CIFFA received a written response from Peter Hill, Vice-President, Commercial and Trade Branch, with the CBSA.

Mr. Hill was thanking CIFFA Executive Director Bruce Rodgers for his correspondence of June 14, 2021, regarding the upcoming end of the zero rated penalty period for electronic house bills.

Hill indicated he appreciated the input provided by CIFFA and understood that there continues to be a learning curve with electronic house bill processes for both internal and external stakeholders.

“In light of your concerns, I would like to advise that the CBSA will refrain from issuing monetary penalties over the next few months, and recommit to continuing our engagement and collaboration with CIFFA and other industry partners, but we will proceed with a full implementation of electronic house bill requirements including monetary penalties in the fall 2021. During this transition time, the CBSA is pleased to continue offering support to external clients through the continuation of bi-weekly implementation calls, and I hope that all freight forwarders and impacted stakeholders take advantage of the information and guidance provided during those calls.”

(View full CBSA letter)

Obtaining and maintaining a professional designation is a worthy achievement and something that any individual can be proud of. Professional Freight Forwarder (PFF) designates are recognized as ‘Individual Members’ of the association. CIFFA would like to recognize these individuals.

Current PFFs have not only met education and work-experience requirements, they also contribute to the industry by sitting on working groups and committees, representing freight forwarders at events and trade shows and contributing to overall promotion of the global freight logistics sector. They make a point of continuing to learn throughout their careers and are required to maintain personal and professional development through conferences, seminars, and classes.

Being recognized as an industry professional – an authority – is a career booster. And the more professionals we can boast, the more the freight forwarding industry can be both an important element of the supply chain sector and a desired career option.

Policy Watch-CIFFA expresses alarm and frustration at recent development in marine shipping sector which will have negative impacts on Canadian businesses and consumers.

A letter to the Federal Minister of Finance, copied to each provincial Solicitor General, calls attention to unjustifiable and unjustified fees to industry.

View Full Letter

June 14, 2021.

Att. The Honourable Chrystia Freeland
Minister of Finance

House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada
K1A 0A6

Chrystia.Freeland@parl.gc.ca

Dear Minister,

We are writing to express alarm and frustration at recent developments in the marine shipping sector which will have negative impacts on Canadian businesses and consumers.

In the last week major shipping lines have announced new “Destination Terminal Handling Charges” on Canadian imports and exports. These fees are not justified, or justifiable.

Ocean shipping has enjoyed an extremely lucrative period during the Covid 19 outbreak.  Demand has been at record high levels and, in addition, shipping firms have been levying huge penalties on Canadian customers struggling to access containers amid the congestion in ports and terminals.

(This latter practice is so egregious it has triggered an investigation by US marine authorities.)

As Minister of Finance you will be preoccupied with concerns about rising inflation.  Clearly, we will experience some unprecedented trends in our economy as we emerge from the Covid pandemic and no one can be blamed for that.  But opportunistic and punitive charges such as these are not in that category. They are levied by service suppliers who see an opportunity in the chaos caused by Covid-19 and unafraid of any reaction from the traditionally supine Canadian regulators.

We urge you to investigate this situation. As you may know, the marine container sector has a long history of domination by explicit cartels. With 80% of our trade exposed to this industry, hardly a Canadian business or consumer is unaffected by price manipulation of this kind.

With best wishes,

Bruce Rodgers            Executive Director, CIFFA

Julia Kuzeljevich          Public Affairs Manager, CIFFA 

The Canadian International Freight Forwarders Association (CIFFA) represents some 260 regular member firms from the largest of global multi-national freight forwarding firms to small and medium sized Canadian companies. CIFFA member companies employ tens of thousands of highly skilled international trade and transportation specialists. As a vital component of Canada’s global supply chain, member firms of the Canadian International Freight Forwarders Association (CIFFA) facilitate the movement of goods around the world. Freight forwarders provide a vital link in Canada’s global supply chains, enhancing export capabilities and assisting in the delivery of competitive solutions to Canada’s importing and exporting communities.

Airfreight capacity, rates remain challenging

By Ian Putzger

A year after the COVID-19 pandemic hit global aviation capacity is still a challenge for forwarders.

Gary Vince, head of air freight, Canada at DHL Global Forwarding, recalled the initial impact on cargo. “With 60-70 percent of belly space gone in a matter of days, it was a major challenge,” he said. “The passenger charters were a major benefit. I don’t know how we’d have gone through this without that push,” he said.

The capacity that has come into the market through freighters and passenger aircraft deployed for cargo missions has alleviated the situation, but lift is still short of demand.

“Reduced capacity has been an ongoing problem,” remarked Sean Crawford, managing director, Canada at Crane Worldwide Logistics. The forwarder has run a number of cargo charters through Toronto.

Jason Berry, vice-president cargo of Air Canada, likened the deployment of passenger planes for cargo to putting a finger in a dike, only to see water pour in through another hole. “We continue to see extremely high demand. We are full,” said. “We’re seeing strength in all lanes.”

The shortage of lift has been most serious on routes out of Asia, but Air Canada has been dealing with excess demand across its network, both on inbound and outbound sectors. “We’re seeing backlogs on many routes,” said Berry. Outbound Latin America has been one of the most challenging sectors.

“We’d love to introduce more lift to markets like Brazil,” Berry said, adding that Air Canada would balance the additional capacity it is bringing on across its network.

It has not helped that Ottawa confined international flights to four gateways – Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver – since February 1. For Edmonton, it meant that its direct flight to Amsterdam by Air France KLM (AF KL) got suspended a second time, having resumed in September after the initial stop last spring.

“We’re moving a lot from Alberta through Vancouver and Ontario,” said Crawford, adding that traffic from the Maritimes is trucked to Montreal or Toronto.

Calgary-based Aerodyne Cargo Services, which represents AirBridgeCargo, used to fly some traffic on British Airways from Calgary to Amsterdam to feed the Russian cargo airline’s departures from the European city. After the suspension of BA’s Calgary flight it put freight on Cargojet to connect with BA’s departure from Toronto.

“It works. The transit times are reasonable,” said owner and managing director Ron Buschman.

The loss of international flights from second-tier gateways has also had repercussions for lift out of the big hubs. For Rhenus Logistics Canada, services out of Ottawa and Edmonton provided additional widebody lift if capacity out of Toronto, Vancouver or Calgary was tight, noted CEO Jeff Cullen.

“We rely on the major gateways. They have become more important,” said Vince. Overall, this has not been a major problem, but it has been a greater challenge for life sciences shipments because of the temperature control requirement, he added.

He remarked that international freighter flights out of the US have remained largely unchanged, which has been an important access route to international markets for Canadian shippers and consignees.

“We take big stuff either to Chicago or JFK. There is adequate capacity close enough,” said Ken Singh, president of Atlas International Freight Forwarding.

According to Vince, cross-border trucking has not faced any issues for short runs. Longer routes, which normally require a team of drivers, have been more challenging.

“Truckload has been manageable, LTL has been challenging,” remarked Crawford.

Some traffic out of Edmonton that used to go on AF-KL has been trucked to other gateways used by the airline, but most of it has been flown out on freighters for the express companies, especially pharmaceuticals and other commodities that need short transit times, reported Alex Lowe, manager of global network development (cargo) of Edmonton Airports.

Freighter capacity at Edmonton has increased massively. Freighter landings were up 16 percent last year, and cargo charters surged 214 percent.

“We had a big increase on the scheduled freighter side. Most have increased their gage and frequency,” said Lowe. To accommodate the anticipated growth the airport is going to add 47,000 sq m of cargo apron space to enable it to park up to nine widebody freighters. It is also going to more than double its cold storage space.

Canada’s two big carriers are upping their capacity. Cargojet, which registered a 46.3 percent increase in block hours last year, is adding more freighters to its lineup. In February it announced plans to expand its fleet with the addition of five B767-300 freighters (three of them to replace older planes). On top of this, Canada’s largest freighter airline is moving into the large widebody bracket with an order for two Boeing 777 freighters, plus options for two more.

The two 777s on order are due to join its fleet in 2023, with the options likely to follow in 2024. These planes reflect management’s decision to push more into international markets, where its presence is currently limited to two weekly flights through Halifax to Cologne. Demand on that sector has been very strong in both directions, reported executive vice-president Jamie Porteous.

It was the first time that Cargojet ordered aircraft without having customers already in place.

“We see demand for international air cargo remain strong for the next 3-5 years minimum,” said Porteous. “If we had the aircraft today we could put them into business 150 percent.”

Air Canada is moving into the freighter arena through conversions of B767-300ERs from its passenger fleet. Having lined up two conversions late last year, it has since announced the decision to bring in five more. The first two are due to enter service in August and October respectively – in time for the 2021 peak season – and the other five are expected to join the fleet before the end of next year.

To address the current capacity shortage the airline is stepping up its cargo flights with passenger planes. In early March the cargo division obtained the blessing from the board to remove the seats from three more B777s and two A330s. It has already used four 777s and three A330s without seats to optimise capacity on the main deck.

In addition, Air Canada is taking two parked B787s out of storage to use for cargo missions. By early March is was running over 220 cargo flights a week, up from 150 during the Christmas peak. By May this will be up to 250-260 weekly flights, according to Berry.

While it has been doing charters for customers, the focus is on building a reliable network that offers customers consistent flights, he stressed.

Demand projections – particularly in regard to e-commerce – and the slow recovery of bellyhold capacity point to a continuing shortage of capacity, a situation that is bound to keep rates high and market conditions volatile. Carries like Air Canada may be striving to offer steady lift, but contracts and pricing remain short term.

“It’s very much ad hoc. We don’t lock in capacity beyond a week or two, unless it’s on freighter. It’s week to week, in the best case month to month, especially with passenger charters,” said Vince.

“Forecasting and planning is very challenging now. You book 5-7 days ahead at best. It’s all very transactional as opposed to strategic,” he continued.

“I don’t think anybody is in a hurry to do BSAs or allocations outbound; inbound the airlines are not signing contracts,” remarked Singh.

The lofty price levels could get nudged higher yet by fuel costs. The price of kerosene has climbed steadily since October. Airlines are not likely to swallow higher fuel costs, especially when it comes to passenger aircraft flying cargo missions, where margins are tight.

“Fuel is always a concern,” said Berry, adding that high kerosene prices could hurt flights in some sectors. In their plight, passenger airlines’ major objective is to manage cash flow and they monitor the costs of each flight nervously. If elevated fuel costs cannot be passed onto shippers, that could deal another blow to capacity availability. Already shippers are looking for less expensive alternatives to airfreight, noted Cullen.

By Petra Javornikova, Senior Instructional Designer at CIFFA

International trade is dynamic and rapidly evolving. As such, CIFFA regularly revises the content of its course materials to accommodate any relevant industry updates, and amends any irrelevant or outdated content.  All revisions must additionally comply with the FIATA Minimum Standards to Obtain the FIATA Diploma in International Freight Forwarding, as the CIFFA courses are evaluated by FIATA every four years.

The most recent revisions, however, are more notable than those in the past 20 years and have been ongoing since the spring of 2020. In August 2020, the newly updated Essentials of Freight Forwarding textbook was completed.

In the past, CIFFA offered four International Freight Forwarding Courses: International Transportation and Trade, Essentials of Freight Forwarding, Specialized Freight Services and Supply Chain Management and Marketing, each with study materials comprising a textbook, exercises and online modules.

Additionally, another edition of the Essentials of Freight Forwarding textbook, titled Fundamentals of Freight Forwarding, was adapted for an international audience by removing content that is strictly Canadian and replacing it with a more universal content, while leaving in some Canadian content that is globally relevant. Another textbook, also completed in August 2020, is the Advanced Freight Services textbook, created by merging the content of the former Specialized Freight Services textbook and the majority of the content of the Supply Chain Management and Marketing textbook. More than half of the content of this textbook was also entirely revised.  This textbook is now used by students registered in the newly introduced FIATA Diploma course, which has replaced the former Specialized Freight Services and Supply Chain Management and Marketing courses.

Also completed in August 2020, the new Essentials of Freight Forwarding online modules offer students an enhanced learning experience and easy navigation. The need to upgrade the online modules arose due to outdated software used for the old modules and resulting technical challenges for students, as well as CIFFA’s desire to improve the overall look and quality of the modules, while incorporating additional knowledge drawn from the vast experience of CIFFA’s instructors. Additionally, these modules were also separately adapted for non-Canadian students.

Currently ongoing, in final stages, are updates to the International Transportation and Trade textbook and online modules.  The completion deadline for the new FIATA Diploma course online modules is September 2021.

Some of the updates to the new education materials include, for example, the changes to the Canadian export reporting procedures, the replacement of the NAFTA with the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), Incoterms® 2020 and the 2020 version of the CIFFA Standard Trading Conditions.  All textbooks are available digitally.

Similarly, due to increased technical challenges and outdated software previously used for the delivery of CIFFA’s exams, CIFFA has transferred all exams to a new exam delivery system which offers students, among other things, increased stability, better navigation, additional features and clearer images. This system also provides CIFFA with enhanced features with respect to reporting and content management.