Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, members of committee. I'm Joël Gauthier, president and CEO of AMT, which is the diminutive of Agence métropolitaine de transport.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to make a presentation as part of your pre-budget consultations.
The Agence métropolitaine de transport (AMT) is the regional transport agency for the greater Montreal area. It takes care of planning, behaviour and development analyses, financial redistribution and the operation of metropolitan commuter rail and bus networks, as well as the construction of the metropolitan infrastructure.
The AMT is not one of a kind. Metrolinx, in the Toronto region, and TransLink, in the Vancouver region, are doing exactly the same thing as us.
We are here this morning to talk to you about investments in transportation, but also about transportation itself. The economic competitiveness of a country such as ours relies on a number of things. It can rely on its policies and taxation, but it also relies on the transportation system.
Freight transportation and public transit have a direct impact on the economic growth and the competitiveness of a country.
In the next few minutes, I am going to talk at length about the impact of traffic congestion on the productivity of a country. As I was telling you, transport is crucial for the development of the economy, for companies and for workers. It also affects people's quality of life.
In 2006, Transport Canada issued a study revealing that the cost of road congestion stood at some $3.7 billion a year in Canada. The data are based on 2002 numbers, meaning 2002 dollars.
For the Montreal area alone, the total cost of traffic congestion is $1.4 billion. Economic costs are recurrent costs. That is based on 2006 data. As you well know, the situation in the Montreal region has not improved since 2006, quite the contrary.
Based on Metrolinx or GO Transit data, it is safe to assume that the situation is roughly the same in the greater Toronto area. We feel that they are in a similar gridlock. In Toronto, the downtown area is between the 401 and Lake Ontario. As you know, traffic congestion is also very real in Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Halifax, and Edmonton, might I add.
There are specific needs. To overcome traffic congestion, we have to offer people alternatives and those alternatives have to be competitive.
Look at the success we have had with the commuter rail system over the past 15 years in the Montreal area. We believe that, if we provide Canadians with public transit alternatives using efficient infrastructure, people are going to use public transit.
The key to increasing the use of public transit is to be competitive in terms of travel time from point A to point B. We must compete against automobiles and provide frequent service with a degree of comfort.
We want to see whether you think Canada should have a national public transport strategy or plan. Canada is the only G8 country that doesn't have a strategy or a plan.
We are also going to suggest setting up an independent fund for that purpose. There is no such fund. There is infrastructure funding, but the money can be used for roads and sewage systems.
Finally, we would like to talk to you about an independent fund dedicated to the development of clean energy for transportation. We are specifically referring to electrifying buses. This is the way of the future. China is already off and running.
Those are the three topics we would like to discuss with you.
Thank you.