Montreal port faces bigger problem than expansion can solve

A freighter is loaded in the Port of Montreal earlier this month. The St. Lawrence River channel from Quebec City to Montreal is too shallow for the standard Neo-Panamax ships that can carry as many as 14,000 containers, says a maritime expert. Photo by Allen McInnis / Postmedia

Montreal’s Contrecœur Terminal expansion as part of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s nation-building projects may ease t raffic at the port , but it won’t solve the port’s bigger problem: getting deep-draft modern container ships in and out.

Jean-Paul Rodrigue, a professor of maritime business administration at Texas A&M University, said the St. Lawrence River channel from Quebec City to Montreal isn’t deep enough to handle increasingly large container ships. It’s designed to handle vessels carrying up to 5,000 s