Transport Committee on May 12th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to meeting number 18 of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure, and Communities. Pursuant to standing order 108(2), we are starting our study on high-speed rail in Canada.

Joining us today from the Department of Transport are Ms. Helena Borges, director general, surface transportation policy; and Kevin Lawless, senior strategic policy and special project officer, surface transportation policy.

Mr. Jean.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

On a point of order, I want to advise the committee that I have circulated a motion. I haven't given 48 hours' notice, but I wanted to circulate it prior to the committee meeting in case people needed to check with other offices as to whether or not it could be dealt with at the end of committee. If not, that's fine. I'll give the 48 hours' notice now and we can deal with it on Thursday.

One way or the other, I just wanted to give each member every opportunity to deal with it accordingly. But I would say deal with it at the end of the meeting today. I would like 15 minutes at the end, if possible, and if we have the time to talk about it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Okay. Are there any other comments?

We do need a motion from the floor for the budget, Mr. Volpe.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

I'd like to move this, but I have a particular concern, Mr. Chair.

There are just two words missing here. One is “France”, and the other one is “Spain”. I don't think we can cover it all with $7,000. Is that an oversight by the parliamentary secretary, who is holding us hostage to his motion?

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Jean.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

I just wanted to let Mr. Volpe know that I'm only about seven hours away from my pilot's licence, so I'll be able to fly us all over there and we'll be able to do that on a reasonable budget.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

I do have about 32 hours now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

That's wonderful.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

That was a scary thought before you said the hours.

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

I move that—

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

What about the motion on the proposed budget for this study?

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

We have a motion on the floor for approximately $7,000 for the committee's study.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Wonderful. Thank you very much.

Now we'll move on to our guests. Please proceed.

[Helena Borges, Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport]

Thank you very much for inviting us to be here today.

We have provided the committee with what we think are key documents that you might want to take into account for your study. Today, all I'll do is give a quick recap of what has happened over the last 15 years and what we have embarked on in looking at high-speed rail.

Before I start, I'll note a couple of definitions, because I'm sure that during the discussion the terminology will come up. It's not as if this is precise terminology, but it is the terminology we refer to. There is high-speed rail, higher-speed rail, and what we call conventional or traditional rail services.

I'll start with the latter. Conventional rail is basically the kind of service that VIA Rail operates today and Amtrak operates over most of its network. The maximum speed is up to about 160 kilometres per hour, and most of the services are operated on joint infrastructure with the freight rail lines. The top speed would be the speed between the corridors that don't have a lot of stops, where the trains can go fairly quickly.

Higher-speed rail is in the middle, between the conventional and the high-speed rail. It's really about improving the conventional service to a somewhat higher speed, going from about 160 kilometres per hour up to a maximum of 240 kilometres per hour. That usually can be accomplished with the same infrastructure as the freight railways, but there would have to be, in some cases, portions of track that would allow the passenger trains to go more quickly.

Then when we talk about high-speed rail, we are really talking about anything from 200 kilometres per hour and over. In most of the systems around the world, there are big variations. The European high-speed trains tend to travel at around the high 200s and 300s, with some of them getting close to 400 kilometres per hour. These systems are usually dedicated rights of way and are electrified, so there is no sharing of tracks with the freight rail systems. The corridor has to be totally separate for safety reasons, because a train would not be able to stop very quickly.

High-speed rail has been looked at fairly frequently over, I would say, the last 20 or so years. We, the Government of Canada, with the governments of Ontario and Quebec, studied the electrified version of high-speed rail in quite a lot of depth back in 1992 to 1995. That study was completed in 1995. We've provided you with a copy of the final report. Basically it looked at the technical and economic feasibility of that service between Windsor and Quebec City.

The study included pretty significant assessments. It was a compilation of studies looking at possible routing options, detailed traffic forecasts and the shifts between the modes, the construction costs, a review of possible technologies that were available at around that time, and operational characteristics—that is, how the service would have to operate, as well as the costs of operating a service and any required subsidies for that.

The study also looked at the socio-economic impact, and the industrial/economic, urban, and environmental impacts, as well as the impact on other modes. Also included was a potential industrial strategy to look at whether it was possible that high-speed rail service could generate other activity. Most importantly, it looked at a financial analysis, including financing options and a cost-benefit analysis.

Since that study, other studies have been undertaken by private entities, including, for example, Bombardier and SNC-Lavalin. There were other proposals submitted. Those were private proposals, I would say, so they would have to come from those entities who did the studies.

More recently in 2003, VIA put forward a proposal that has been referred to as VIAFast. It was a higher-speed rail proposal--that is, for between 160 and 240 kilometres per hour. That study was assessed by us and VIA. The option was really to provide a slightly faster service than what VIA is operating today in the corridor between Windsor and Quebec City.

In January 2008, former minister Cannon agreed with his colleagues in Ontario and Quebec that perhaps it was time to revisit the high-speed rail file, and we agreed to jointly update the studies that were done from 1992 to 1995. So we have now embarked on those studies. The actual work began in February of this year and is expected to take a little bit over a year to complete, so the studies will not be completed until early 2010.

We did provide, by the way, the request for proposal document that was tendered for the consulting firm that was selected, and in it you will find the various elements that are going to be looked at in more detail, the kinds of things we're going to be looking at. In summary, we will once again review the high-speed rail technologies that are available. There has been an enormous evolution in high-speed rail technology in the past 15 years. There are lots more options today than there were back then.

Also, we must consider the possible routing options and look at what was looked at before or anything else that may serve as an option for today. We are going to update the transportation demand forecast. This is a critical piece of work. I'll say that this is the driver of the whole study. We need to understand what the possible ridership would be for such a service and where that ridership would be coming from.

We will also update the implementation costs, the capital and the construction costs, as well as assess the operating costs for such a service. We will analyze, I will say, in more detail perhaps than the 1992-1995 study, the environmental and social impacts. This has become a pretty significant concern more recently, given the climate change impacts and the clean air objectives of the three governments.

Also, we will redo the financial and economic analysis. The objective is to look at opportunities for private sector involvement in such a service, and we will look at whether or not a public-private partnership could help make this more affordable. We've also expanded a couple of areas that weren't looked at in 1992 and 1995. We're looking at the institutional framework, the governance types of regimes for other high-speed rail experiences across the world. How do those function? What kind of entities are they? Are they private or public-private? Are they crown corporations? Are they an arm of a government department? It will be things like that. We'll review implementation scenarios, whether or not you do a phased approach or do everything all at once. We'll offer suggestions on how that might go.

We have to assess the impact on the other modes. This is always a very important and controversial issue. You will probably hear this if you're planning to invite some witnesses. Then they'll provide some conclusions and recommendations on what might need to be next or how to proceed from there.

As I said, the study is expected to be completed early in 2010.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Volpe.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Thanks a lot, Ms. Borges and Mr. Lawless, for coming here to share that with us. It's a good summary, and I thank you for it.

I've got one question. I hope you don't think it's too forward. After all those studies, why has a decision not come to get started?

[Helena Borges]

To get started in terms of construction? As I said, we just launched the update of those studies. The situation has evolved considerably since 1992-1995. We have more population in the corridor than we did before. The technology options have evolved significantly. As well, there are changes in the other modes. If you recall at that time, we had a slightly different airline structure than we do today, and people, I think, are changing their attitudes. We know Canadians are still highly dependent on automobiles, and that's probably the mode of preference, but I think more and more we're seeing a shift toward greater use of public transportation, whether it's urban transit or rail. Even VIA has been experiencing a little bit of growth on its passenger rail services.

So we need to make sure we are current in these studies. This would be a huge undertaking, and we want to make sure we're looking at everything that needs to be looked at.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Surely you've thought in terms of parcelling this particular project, rather than going over the entire length of the corridor right off the bat, to do the corridor in stages. But you didn't mention that in your introduction.

[Helena Borges]

I did in terms of the implementation scenarios. I think we have to look at the whole corridor in terms of the ridership and the cost, but in terms of how you would implement, what would make more sense, we've asked the consultants for advice on that. Are there segments of the corridor that probably would lend themselves to implementation faster? Is there more ridership, more return on the corridor versus their looking at the whole thing? You could do it in blocks or you could do it altogether. We'd like to have all the information.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Doing it in chunks, in segments, would have a big impact on the amount of money that has to flow out of the treasury, whether it's the federal, Ontario or Quebec, or the private sector treasury. There has been a series of estimates about how much this would cost, predicated on a variety of issues. One of them is that the overall amount is prohibitive, and I think you said yes, it's a huge undertaking.

I think the last study that was done by the three governments indicated that you probably wouldn't be spending very much money in the first couple of years, because you would be looking at land assembly plus the studies, etc., and you would be spending somewhere in the vicinity of $50 million to $100 million in just doing that, and that's it. Has that ever been one of the constraining factors associated with actually implementing or getting into high-speed train travel?

[Helena Borges]

Are you asking about the total cost, or the upfront costs?

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

I mean the total cost.

[Helena Borges]

The last study, the 1992-95 one, concluded that to implement high-speed rail from Quebec to Windsor would cost $18 billion. That is a very large investment, and that was an estimate.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

But in fairness, it's over a 10-year period. I guess my question is, if it were $18 billion over a 10-year period and you said for the sake of simplicity that it meant about $1.8 billion per year, not all of it coming out of the federal treasury, does that money create an inhibiting factor on the part of the Department of Transport?

[Helena Borges]

We currently would not have that kind of revenue to fund this kind of project. It is something that would have to be allocated in future budgets.