They are called teachers.
Evidence of meeting #105 for Finance in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was rail.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #105 for Finance in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was rail.
A video is available from Parliament.
6:10 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Science Centres
Oh yes, sorry. Of course.
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
I've been in education; we have science. Do you have any programs to work with educational institutions? Do you have programs that encourage females to teach science in the elementary or junior high?
6:10 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Science Centres
Absolutely. Yes. My apologies for misunderstanding your question.
Yes, all our member science centres have school programs and work very closely with elementary schools to augment the curriculum. They very specifically speak to the things that the teachers are teaching in the class. It's a very good partnership to support what the kids are learning in class. A number of teacher training programs are also provided by the science centres, particularly for the elementary school teachers who may not have chosen science as their background university degree program before going to teachers' college. The programs are very specifically designed to be fluid and move with science as it is evolving, sometimes ahead of the textbooks, and making sure that the students are learning what's really happening in the world of science.
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Textbooks are an archaic thing, by the way. That's not where kids are at and instruction is. In the piece I saw, some departments of education were running one-week, science-oriented summer camps for teachers. Are you involved or would you support programs like that?
6:10 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Science Centres
Of course, yes.
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Okay, good. Thank you.
Going to health, 97% of our health dollars go to acute and 3% to public health. We've had great Canadian innovations in lots of things. But there are those shots that kids need, and we're at a tipping point in some of those general diseases that we fix like measles, whooping cough. Would you consider spending some of your dollars in research on how we convince people that they need to do those things that we have developed great things for?
6:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada
We have been involved in much research on vaccines to treat the daily occurrence of the usual infections. When I started my training, we had maybe four to six vaccines that we were giving children regularly. Now there are a dirty dozen. We have been doing that work. That continues to be an area where, in recent history, Canada has been and can continue to be at the forefront. But again, we need to support it.
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
But we have fewer people taking vaccinations all the time. It's a growing social problem, and the tipping point is going to come.
6:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada
Sorry, are you talking about providing vaccines?
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
6:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada
That's a very important public health issue, and—
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
You can develop all the great innovations you want, but if people don't use them, we're going to have societal programs....diabetes is the next one.
6:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada
I absolutely agree with you. We would love to support all efforts to ensure that more Canadians and particularly Canadian children are vaccinated.
6:15 p.m.
Liberal
Raj Grewal Liberal Brampton East, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for coming. It's very much appreciated.
My questions are for the Railway Association of Canada. I have a CN terminal in my riding, one of the biggest in the country. They employ a lot of people directly and indirectly because a lot of trucking companies are located in my riding, and a lot of truckers. We'll get to that.
I just want to ask you a question on the VIA proposal. VIA's ridership is pretty poor, or performing less than adequately across the country. Why do you think that is?
6:15 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Railway Association of Canada
VIA Rail has actually increased their ridership over the last few years. I think they've done a really good job at increasing their ridership with what is fundamentally an older product.
The number that really jumps out to me in all of this discussion is 82%. Currently, 82% of the trips taken between Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto are by car. I'll bet you that those of you who drive occasionally on the highway notice that most of the cars have one occupant. In Ottawa we have a high occupancy lane; you only need to be two, and most of the time it's empty. That really is what you would call low-hanging fruit, to move people out of their cars and into a train.
Why aren't they doing it? Because we currently don't have the frequency of schedules to make it convenient so that you can decide to take a train, knowing that when you're finished doing whatever you're doing at the other end you'll come back by train; and it's a little slow.
One of the members today was saying that they came by train from Montreal. Montreal is a great trip. If you go to Toronto it takes a little longer, and the competition by car is faster. If you could get there more quickly by train than by car, you're going to eat into that 82% and you're going to see tremendous benefit quickly.
I think they've done a good job of selling what they have.
6:15 p.m.
Liberal
Raj Grewal Liberal Brampton East, ON
Your rationale to invest in the railways was that it would take more trucks off the roads, but that would also take jobs off of the roads. How would you defend that? I understand that your job is to advocate for your industry, but our job as parliamentarians is to see what's in the best interest of the nation. Those are a lot of trucking jobs. I think your statistic was that for one train it would be 300 trucks. Those are 300 jobs and 300 families.
6:15 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Railway Association of Canada
It's a good question. Thanks for that question because it allows me an opportunity to elaborate on that.
First of all, you're never going to drive a train up to a Walmart store. You need trucks. What we're really talking about here is long-haul trucking. The trucking guys will tell you that they have a shortage of drivers.
6:15 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Railway Association of Canada
What we're really asking for is a nudge in the right direction to solve this problem, and to see more of the local trucking happen and more of the long-haul trucking switched to rail. If we did that, we would see that it would ease up on some of the driver shortages. It would be better for the drivers because they would be doing shorter hauls, and they would be able to go home to their families at night. We would also see fewer greenhouse gases and fewer pollutants by virtue of that change.
6:15 p.m.
Liberal
Raj Grewal Liberal Brampton East, ON
Thank you.
One of the things occurring at our CN terminal is the long wait lines to get the truckers in and out as they pick up and drop off loads. This may be out of the scope of your expertise, but in terms of railways and the industry, how does Canada compare to other countries?
6:15 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Railway Association of Canada
Is that in terms of our efficiency?
