Transport Committee on Nov. 16th, 2009

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Mario Laframboise]

We will take a break for a couple of minutes to allow our other witnesses to take their places.

Thank you very much, Mr. Miller, for your participation.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Mario Laframboise]

Good afternoon, Ms. Borges.

Good afternoon, Mr. Lawless.

You are regulars at our committee. You will have an opportunity to make a very quick presentation. I am sure you are ready to answer my colleagues' questions about high speed rail.

The floor is yours, Ms. Borges.

[Helena Borges, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy, Gateways & Infrastructure, Department of Transport]

Thank you. I am pleased to be back. I do not have much to add today to what I said last time, in May, when I spent two hours with the committee.

I'll start with just reminding people of what we said when we were here in May. I think what we did was take you through the different types of rail systems in terms of conventional, higher speed, and high speed, and tried to explain the differences between them. I also provided a bit of a summary of the previous studies that have been undertaken concerning high-speed rail with different parties and also with our provincial colleagues--Ontario and Quebec--and provided an overview of the update of the studies we are currently undertaking jointly with the two provinces. Also, I had noted at that point that we were making investments in VIA Rail that are ongoing now. The government announced two instalments: $516 million in 2007, and $407 million as part of the economic action plan earlier this year, for a total of $923 million of improvements on VIA Rail's networks, a lot of that going into the Quebec-Windsor corridor.

As well, I provided a bit of an overview of what we understand to be the program the U.S. government has launched in terms of its vision for high-speed rail. And I understand the committee had the opportunity to go to Washington and New York and had some discussions with the congressional representatives, Amtrak, the Government Accounting Office, and others. You probably know more about it than I do, so I would look forward to any insights you can provide us with about that program.

The one thing that I think you have been hearing, following some of the hearings that happened before the committee, is the importance of looking at a gradual system of higher speed to high speed. The approach that we are taking right now with VIA Rail is very much that. The investments are really to try to improve the service that VIA provides today, to improve the timeliness of the service, the on-time performances, improve the speeds but also add a few more frequencies. In fact, we view that as a transition. If ever high-speed rail does become feasible, we will be able to have tested whether or not additional riders will get on to VIA with improved service.

Other than that, I think you probably heard—just like we told you when we were here last—that there are key factors of success for high-speed rail. You probably heard that in the United States. We need to keep in mind that these systems are very expensive and that ultimately we need sufficient ridership in order to make the systems self-sustaining, and even in that we haven't yet found any system around the world that covers its operating cost or its capital cost. We are doing a study that I mentioned earlier with Ontario and Quebec, and we hope we are on target right now to finish that in the first quarter of 2010.

With that, I will open it up for questions.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Mario Laframboise]

Mr. Dhaliwal.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Madame Borges, for your presentation.

You said you support the high-speed rail infrastructure in the future. I'm going to take it very locally, to the lower mainland in British Columbia, where I come from. There is one bridge that is a century old, the swing bridge in New Westminster, and I'm certain you're familiar with that. It's a key bottleneck when it comes to railway infrastructure of the lower mainland. Are Transport Canada and the provincial ministry looking forward to doing anything to replace it or to doing any studies?

[Helena Borges]

As you may be aware, as part of the government's Asia Pacific gateway and corridor initiative, we have over the past three years announced numerous investments in rail infrastructure in the lower mainland. What we have been doing is systematically studying where the bottlenecks are in the rail infrastructure and then making improvements--studying what improvements need to be made, and then making improvements with partners. Those partners include the province; TransLink, the regional transit authority; and the port of metro Vancouver. In all cases they have included the municipalities as well as the railways.

The New Westminster rail bridge that you mentioned over the Fraser River is the last piece of the corridors that we are looking at. We've addressed what is called the Roberts Bank rail corridor, which goes directly from western Canada into Deltaport. We've already looked at the rail corridor at Burrard Inlet on the north shore. We made an announcement there in March of this year. Just a few weeks ago, in October, we made an announcement on the south shore on the terminals on the Vancouver part of the rail corridor.

The New Westminster rail bridge is our next study area, and we're hoping to launch the detailed engineering study on the possibility of replacing it. We've done some preliminary work with TransLink in looking at whether it would be possible to do a replacement bridge jointly with the replacement of the Pattullo Bridge. We've done that work with them. That is possible, but it's just that some of the height issues and the cost issues are quite large. We're just going to look at replacing the rail bridge itself and what the cost of that would be, because it's not just the bridge you have to look at; it's also the connecting rail lines that connect to the bridge.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Madam Borges, you mentioned that you made some announcements of some improvements in the past. When I look at the lower mainland, Vancouver, and the Seattle-Vancouver corridor, that is key for the tourism industry. The tourism industry is already dying because of the roadblocks we get as a result of many other issues. I won't go into taking GST credits away and what not, but on that particular corridor, if you say that you were partnered there with the municipalities and the local government, why did the local government, the provincial government, have to go by itself to upgrade the rail sidings infrastructure and the federal government did not play any role?

[Helena Borges]

I should clarify. The investments that we've been making in partnership with others have focused on what we call the public infrastructure, so the points that connect to the local road infrastructure and the public facilities. We ourselves have not provided any funding directly for the railways to improve their infrastructure. You may know that that rail line is owned by Burlington Northern Santa Fe, which is a U.S. company, and that company, just like CN and CP, has an obligation to improve and maintain its infrastructure. We do not contribute to their infrastructure directly, unless there is a direct public benefit to it.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Certainly when we see tourism, that's a direct public benefit to small businesses, which comprise 95% of the businesses on the lower mainland. If I look at the Surrey and Delta areas, and Vancouver and beyond, they're all small businesses and a direct public benefit. That's why I ask why the federal government did not take a leadership role in making improvements to this side of the tracks.

[Helena Borges]

We didn't because of two things. One, both the owner of the railway and the user of the railway, Amtrak, are U.S. companies. We invest in VIA infrastructure, as you've heard from me and from Mr. Miller. We don't invest in Amtrak infrastructure, because that's a U.S. company that is generating revenues. I think the Province of British Columbia made a decision that it would benefit the local or regional economy, and it was their prerogative to make that decision.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

So you agree that British Columbia, when they made that decision, kept British Columbians in mind, but the federal government ignored.... Anyway, my next question.

You mentioned municipalities. I'm going to take you right there. As the recent OECD report informed us, Canadian cities have dismal rankings on transport infrastructure compared with other cities, even if we look at the former Eastern Bloc. Isn't it time for the federal government to make a real commitment and show leadership on urban transit?

[Helena Borges]

I won't quote numbers because I don't have them at my fingertips, but I can tell you that the federal government has invested significant amounts of money in urban transit, particularly since 2001-2002.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I'm talking about in the last four years.

[Helena Borges]

Over the last four years, they have actually made even more. I think the last figures we calculated showed that when you take into account the Building Canada fund, the public transit capital trust--there have been three different announcements or installments of it--the programs under the economic action plan.... In the Toronto area alone there have been investments in both the TTC with the Spadina subway extension, the streetcar enhancements, the St. Clair line, and other improvements that support the transit city, and Go Transit--and that's not to mention the improvements that we made in the TTC back in 2006-2007. The federal share of that was $350 million for a project that was over a billion dollars.

In GO Transit, again in 2003-2004, there were announcements that are coming to fruition now--again, over a billion dollars--and this year there has been an announcement of over $500 million for GO Transit to improve its network in the greater Toronto area. There have been investments in York region. There have been investments in Mississauga and Brampton, all in the greater Toronto region.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Nothing in British Columbia, though.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Mario Laframboise]

The floor is yours, Mr. Plamondon, go ahead.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC]

Welcome to our committee, Ms. Borges. I am sitting on the committee for the first time this year. I spoke earlier to another witness about environmental impact studies. You also spoke earlier about studies you presented here in May. I assume they were financial impact studies.

Did the study's findings uncover any major environmental roadblocks to the development of high speed rail in the Quebec-Windsor corridor, and if so, were the difficulties that you identified surmountable? In other words, are there any major issues from the environmental standpoint? What did your studies show?

[Helena Borges]

The studies I referred to were carried out jointly with the provinces of Quebec and Ontario from 1992 to 1995. They were feasibility studies, the purpose of which was to determine whether high speed rail was an option. They were not really environmental impact studies.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC]

So that was not really your focus.

[Helena Borges]

No, however we did identify a number of potential environmental issues. For example, if we start acquiring land to build a dedicated track for the network, there would be implications in terms of the flow of rivers, for example. If we do go further with this project and carry out more in-depth studies, well at that point we will conduct environmental impact studies, but for the time being there have not been any.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC]

What would be the total cost in today's dollars for the 1995-1999 studies? They were not in-depth studies, and the environmental component, which has gained a lot of importance over time, will undoubtedly push that cost up.

But how much would those studies cost in today's dollars?

[Helena Borges]

The cost was $18 billion in 1995. In today's dollars, that might be $23 billion or $24 billion. We are in the process of updating those studies and, in 2010, we will have new figures.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC]

In the context in which this project would become a reality—you stated that the department hoped that the high speed rail project would be carried out—you were always planning to have a dedicated track, and not a shared track for both passenger and freight. Was it not always an issue of a single track?

[Helena Borges]

Yes. In the case of a high speed system, the theory is that we would need a dedicated corridor that is completely separate from the other routes.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC]

In your exchanges with the government of Ontario and Quebec, there was talk of their wanting to be financially involved as well. The users, which would be private sector business, also showed great interest in being financially involved. This involvement would therefore include two levels of government and private business.