Evidence of meeting #3 for Finance in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was municipalities.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
I can already anticipate, though, the argument from municipalities that would say that they don't have the capital for up-front costs in the immediate.... How do you respond to that?
Policy Director, Clean Energy Canada
When you're looking at how to fund electric buses, that comes from a bunch of different places. The rebate has to be scaled to the cost of the bus, and the cost of the bus will be different in different jurisdictions across Canada. Because of the fuel savings, the emissions potential is actually different based on electricity grids in different parts of the country. That's the first thing you have to look at.
The second thing you have to look at for municipalities is the related infrastructure cost that comes with electrification, which is not necessarily always considered by everybody. How do you get charging stations up front? How do you retrofit or build new bus depots? There are also things like IT systems. If you have an infrastructure program—not to double-speak—for the related infrastructure program for buses and then a rebate program that can rebate the cost differently and is scalable based on the true cost of the bus, that will help some of the municipalities that have already set aside money to do this—for example, the City of Toronto, and TransLink in Vancouver—spur forward their ambitions to electrify their fleets.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
We will have to end this panel there. I want to thank all the witnesses for coming forward.
I ask the committee members to hold on for a minute.
We're sorry for having been a little tighter on time, but thank you for your presentations and for doing the work to prepare them and for answering questions.
Just for the benefit of the committee, we've been back and forth with the Department of Finance on time frames for a minister to appear, and it seems that the only time frame possible for Minister Fortier to appear is tomorrow night, from eight to nine. I'm just wondering where people are at on that. I know it would run us longer tomorrow night. We've tried several other times, including on the 18th and on Thursday, but everyone is completely tied up at either the G20 or some other place.
The time frame will be eight o'clock to nine o'clock tomorrow night, just so that members have notice.
With that, we will adjourn until 3:30. Thank you all again.
The meeting is adjourned.