Finance Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2018

[Robert White]

Well, for us at Lifesaving Society Canada, we're different partners within this coalition. The Red Cross is also a partner in this. We do this together. At Lifesaving Society Canada, we provide services to about 1.2 million Canadians a year. About 70% of them are kids under 12 who are in learn-to-swim programs.

The problem we're having with new Canadians is that they're coming in from places where they don't necessarily have water in which they can learn to swim before they get here. We also have extended summers, like this summer. People were flocking more towards waterways and stuff like that.

For us, this is very important. At Lifesaving Society Canada, we have a program called “swim to survive”. We encourage all grade 3 students to take the program. They learn how to deal with water and how to go into water. But we should be working with all newcomers who come to Canada and we should be teaching them how to swim, definitely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We'll go back to Ms. Alleslev.

[Leona Alleslev]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to expand a little on the airport situation. I mean, not everybody understands that we have different classes of airports, with different amounts of funding and ways we support each of them.

In this submission, you're talking about the NAS, are you not?

[Greg Hierlihy]

Yes, it's primarily the NAS. That's correct.

[Leona Alleslev]

Fantastic. Do we have a mechanism right now of evaluating the capital investment, infrastructure, and operating health of each of those NAS airports?

[Greg Hierlihy]

Not that I'm aware of, no.

[Leona Alleslev]

Your ask is to double the airport capital assistance fund, yet we don't necessarily have a clear picture of how healthy the capital infrastructure situation is at each of those airports.

[Greg Hierlihy]

I'd just say, not that I'm aware of. I mean, that $75-million figure was arrived at through a very collaborative process of all the airports identifying their upcoming capital needs of what would be....

Sorry, was that in order to address the safety-related items?

[Leona Alleslev]

Well, RESA is one of them.

[Greg Hierlihy]

Yes.

[Leona Alleslev]

It's almost a one-time item, theoretically, because if we extend the runway for safety, then we're done. It's once in a lifetime, hopefully.

[Greg Hierlihy]

That's correct. As referenced in a previous question, the other items would be firefighting vehicles, for example, and snow-clearing equipment. Heavy equipment needs some recurring or ongoing replacement, so those types of things would be addressed by this.

While I'm not aware of that airport health mechanism, I can tell you that from a small-airport perspective, with the revenue potential we have, it's very difficult to fund these larger purchases. In the case of Saint John Airport, this year we will be incurring debt for the very first time under that requirement of refurbishing the runways, as well as upgrading our existing infrastructure.

[Leona Alleslev]

So then we compare that with your ask to eliminate rent. Can you give us a comparison of the increase in the capital investment versus the offset of the decrease in the rent?

[Greg Hierlihy]

You're asking how much would be redeployed into capital investment from the—

[Leona Alleslev]

Exactly. You're asking for a doubling increase in capital investment while at the same time asking for significant reduction in annual recurring operating expenses through rent. Am I correct?

[Greg Hierlihy]

Yes.

[Leona Alleslev]

Ultimately, if we don't have a good picture of the health of those airports and therefore of the level of concern regarding the infrastructure and capital, we don't know if we should really be tripling down, because we're going to lose x amount of annual recurring operating revenue while at the same time vastly increasing the capital. While that's what the finance committee is here to look at and make recommendations on, we don't have all the information with which to evaluate that effectively.

Again, the rent allows the federal government to have income to redistribute to perhaps other airports that are not in the NAS category, because there's no question that airports are critical to the economy throughout. So it's a bit of a balancing act because it is in the public interest.

I wonder if you could give us any more thoughts on that.

[Greg Hierlihy]

One of the items you touched on, in terms of the rent—and it's in the submission—is that there is $368 million paid in rent, and the specific fund that goes back to airports is $38 million, so only a percentage of that rent. I don't have the exact information you're looking for in terms of—

[Leona Alleslev]

But that's directly through capital assistance. It doesn't give where that other money goes—those airports and infrastructure that are not part of the NAS. Those, overall, are other elements that affect that.

[Greg Hierlihy]

That's correct.

[Leona Alleslev]

Could you also talk just quickly about the national trade corridors fund and what kind of investments you're asking for in that—what specifically and why?

[Greg Hierlihy]

What was submitted by the various airports is confidential in nature, so I don't know exactly, but I know it's related to increasing cargo and freight capacity and other trade-oriented items. But I'm not aware of the specific ones that were not considered. I know that Halifax and Moncton submitted ones on that type of basis, and I know there's no shortage of ideas with regard to how to reduce the bottlenecks and meet the criteria of that program.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you.

Mr. Matier, before we go to Mr. Fergus, what would be the As, Bs, and Cs the federal government would need to do to get the refresh on the space program you're proposing?

I've talked to Rodger Cuzner about this a few times. What do we need to do from our end to get there?

[Stephen Matier]

The “A” part is, of course, refreshing the pre-existing documentation. There is, for instance, a suborbital/orbital launch regulatory framework, and the last date on it is 1999. We've started to work collaboratively with Transport Canada, but they'll admit it has been rather ad hoc. I've come to the table with this proposal, and they've been gracious enough to work collaboratively with us to pull in the CSA to review some documentation along the way, but a concerted effort in the framework for that regulatory environment is key to this.

Probably most important, though, is public support. You've seen a lot of the go-public support by the federal government for this initiative. There have been bits and pieces—the space policy initiative, some seed funding from the CSA. There's been a large push recently by the aerospace community to try to bring this to the forefront of priority. Much like you have the rural broadband initiative as a focus, having this anchor tenancy of the spaceport will be a big part of the draw for the entire commercial aerospace industry in Canada.

It's that focus that is really going to bring it all together. I have investors who are looking to know whether the federal government and provincial government are going to be on board with this thing. It's really about that vocal support for a Canadian commercial launch facility.

My first visit was in Moncton, to Transport Canada, and I told them to be willing to throw me out of the room if they didn't want to hear my story. It was the best briefing opportunity to hear about rocket launches and stuff like that that they'd had in a while, so they weren't going to send me away. But the whole idea was that they could throw me out of the room if they didn't want to embrace this.

Everybody's allowing this initiative to go forward, but nobody has been standing next to us and running with us. I feel like a marathon runner, alone. I've gotten a few water bottles along the way with this initiative, but it would be good to have some people running alongside me, especially within the federal government. As you pointed out, MP Cuzner has been a real advocate for us and supporting us, for sure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay.

Talking about runners, we'll go to Mr. Fergus.