Transport Committee on May 28th, 2009

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

Thank you.

Mr. Benson and Mr. Wheten, I know you have studied the impact of this type of technology in other jurisdictions--France, Spain, Germany, Japan, Italy, and so on--in Europe. One of the things that concern a lot of people concerns me. The English have had a serious problem with the introduction of high-speed rail. One of their problems is that they don't have the labour infrastructure to deal with this kind of technology. By that I mean that if you don't have access to the same kind of engineering capacity required to deal with that technology.... Do we have it? Does your membership have it?

[Phil Benson]

Yes, we do, without a doubt.

If a train moves in Canada, just about, it'll be a locomotive engineer. We do the GO Train. We do the interurbans today in Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto. I think the capacity to build a track and to run a track is something we really don't have to be very concerned about.

Obviously there'll be some training issues. There'll be different aspects. But these are people who have been handling Canada's transit since we were a country. CP always likes to say that they're the reason there's a Canada. We like to think that we're the reason. In fact, locomotive engineers were a union before Canada, and in fact, they were a union before it was legal to be a union.

So I don't think that's a major concern. I think it's the political will and desire to do it, more than anything else.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you, Mr. Volpe.

Mr. Laframboise.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Brehl, you say that building and maintaining do not present problems. You have the people needed, your colleagues have the skills, and you can handle it.

You represent the Rail Conference of Teamsters Canada, but have you had inter-union discussions about rapid rail, with colleagues who work in other areas of transportation, such as air or bus, or is it too early for that?

[William Brehl]

I'll let Mr. Benson answer that.

[Phil Benson]

I can answer that. Thank you very much. Merci beaucoup.

I think one of the ways to respond to that...as I've said before this committee, and a lot of people ask, how can the Teamsters do it? Because we represent rail, we represent road, we're the biggest player in small parcels, freight forwarding, we're in the air world, we're at the ports, and we're even in buses now too, or coming. We don't view it as a zero-sum game. We think it's a win-win situation. It has been for the Teamsters.

From the companies' side, they're called integrators. I'll give you UPS as an example. A quarter of a million Teamsters work at UPS. They have the largest fleet of trucks, they have dedicated trains, they have their own ships, and they're the fifth largest airline in the world--wall-to-wall Teamsters. So we don't view it as a negative; we view it as a positive. We think it's a win-win situation.

The gentleman from the busing industry was talking about the integration package. We think it's a growth industry. I couldn't agree more that in regard to Peterboro, London, and places like that, through Quebec City and up the north shore, it's just a wonderful way to expand and have growth. Every time you put these types of vehicles in, with the boom that occurs around stations, the boom that occurs, as you know, just from GO trains, etc., it's worth it.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Brehl, some witnesses have told us that the cold could affect the operation of high-speed trains in Canada. Have you had an opportunity to talk to others of your colleagues in other countries? Does building a high-speed rail system in a cold climate concern you?

[William Brehl]

I haven't done a lot of studying of other countries, but as I understand it, high-speed rail is in other countries that have cold climates as well without a problem. It also depends on what type of rail system you're going to go to. If you go to the maglev, the magnetic levitation, it's higher and it's its own fixed stand that the train runs on. If you go to the 400-kilometre-per-hour train, fixed standard rail, anything under that you get onto the subgrade, and you're going to balance the subgrade, which is what we run with anyway. You need continuous welded rail, or CWR, and you will have brakes and rail no matter what, but you have to get out to fix them, and you will, as we do now.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Wheten?

[Mike Wheten]

One of the factors with maintaining rail in Canada is that we run huge freight trains, and probably the weight of the trains would have more of an effect. The high-speed trains are fast, but they're not heavy. Where you get more damage to the rail and what makes it more difficult is when you run...for example, CP at the present time is experimenting with 30,000-tonne trains. Just prior to a month ago, we thought--and we still think so, to be honest with you--that a 20,000-tonne train is a heavy train. That is a very huge train. They were combining in Kenora, just east of Winnipeg, over the last week or 10 days two 15,000-tonne trains and running them over the track. That would be more of a challenge. There would be different engineering challenges to maintaining high-speed rail, but I don't think they would be anywhere near the challenges there are to maintaining track where you're running even 15,000-tonne trains. Back in the eighties, if we had a 5,000- or 6,000-tonne train, that was a big train. Generally speaking, they kept them below 6,000 feet.

So there's more of a challenge there than there is with the high-speed trains. I think once you build the track and you get the trains running, there shouldn't be as much of a problem maintaining the track.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Right.

Mr. Wheten, as a locomotive engineer, do you meet your international colleagues? Do they not find it a little bizarre that Canada doesn't have rapid rail yet? Have you had an opportunity to meet with colleagues in other countries?

[Mike Wheten]

Well, yes, I have discussed that subject, but only with my American counterparts. Actually, I'm going to Europe later this year. But I do understand, because of our population. The Americans look as if they're going to get into high-speed rail fairly soon, and in a big way. Again, they're looking at corridors: the eastern corridors, California.

But my understanding, and I could be wrong, is that we don't have the population. There's 10 times the population in the States that there is here, so they have more monetary capacity than we do. Although I envy them, in a way, I do understand the differences in the cultures.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Hopcroft, are you doing a feasibility study with other cities and municipalities?

[Grant Hopcroft]

That's correct: Quebec City and the City of Laval. The City of Toronto, we understand, will have some involvement, and the City of Windsor as well.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Will this study be independent of the one being done by Quebec, Ontario and the federal government?

[Grant Hopcroft]

That's correct. I'm sorry if I did not mention the Ville de Québec. It's involved as well. In fact, it has taken some leadership in this.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Are you doing the study because the participating cities have stations within their boundaries?

[Grant Hopcroft]

They're all served currently by VIA. We want to ensure we have some facts of our own. We think it will provide, in some cases, a useful second opinion to the study being done by the federal government and the provinces, and in other cases it may look at some socio-economic impacts that may not, in fact, be covered by the Ontario-Quebec-Canada study.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Have you already issued the invitation to tender? Is the study underway?

[Grant Hopcroft]

The contract is expected to be signed probably within the next two or three weeks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Maloway.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Last year around this time the economy in Alberta was still flying pretty high. I know of one instance where an entire train crew—I guess it wasn't a train crew but a section crew—on the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border just all quit one day and moved to Alberta to work in the oil fields. That caused me some concern about whether or not we'll have enough skilled labour in a very overheated economy.

Now, the government is proceeding with a lot of megaprojects and infrastructure projects coming out of the last budget. Do you have any concerns at all that there may be a shortage of labour when it comes time to build this high-speed rail system?

[Phil Benson]

I guess I could speak for Teamsters' construction division; this is Teamsters' rail division operative.

I think a while back there were certainly a few areas where there were some shortages. One, of course, was in the pipeline. That was simply because they hadn't built pipelines in such a long time that a lot of the people who had built pipelines had in fact retired. We proceeded with a large training initiative to correct that for the upcoming pipeline growth that we still hope will come.

I think that's a construction issue. You'd have to talk probably with the building trades and others. Clearly, there were some areas where there was...I wouldn't say a shortage but a disallocation of labour resources across the country. We like to say in construction, “If you build it, we will come.” I think generally, at the end of the day, if we're looking now at a recession, time being as it is, going forward we probably will not have that problem. I certainly hope not.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Now, are you aware of any other routes the federal government should be considering in this higher-speed rail project? We were talking about eastern Canada here, the Toronto and Montreal areas and Toronto-Windsor.

[Phil Benson]

I think, clearly, people have talked about Edmonton to Calgary.

The other issue that Brother Wheten raised--and I think we all agree with it--is that high-speed rail is such a long time down the pike, no matter what we do with it. Let's not forget that VIA Rail does offer an option to transport more people to help reduce Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. It too could be speeded up a little bit, especially with some work on the south shore line going through the Montreal-to-Windsor corridor now, some work there at various places. It just doesn't have to be a Toronto-Montreal and Calgary-Edmonton run. It's something we could really put elsewhere in the country. And you could do that today; you don't have to do it six years from now.