Transport Committee on Nov. 16th, 2009

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

So if you were taking an incremental approach, you'd be looking at cost and additional speed on the line. In your analysis, there are a number of issues that run together.

[Helena Borges]

Right. We look at the rail traffic and the road traffic, and they call that the cross-product. It has to do with the interference, how long trains might be taking to clear the lines. This relates to impeding traffic, safety, the number of accidents that happen between vehicle traffic and train traffic. There can also be problems with pedestrian mobility, bicycles, those kinds of things.

In some cases, particularly in the urban areas, if they aren't grade-separated and it's a level crossing, the train's also going to have to do a lot of whistling, so that makes other kinds of noise. We take all those factors into account in deciding whether to grade separate or not. A lot of the times, it's the amount of time that a vehicle has to sit and wait for the train to cross. Windsor is a good example. We were having trucks coming out of Chrysler plant having to wait 15 to 25 minutes for the train to cross, because it's a busy corridor.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

When it comes to investing in commercial freight movement, the railways pay their own way. But trucks don't—we pay for the transportation costs.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

In taxes.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

What is the percentage of taxes a truck pays on the highway vis-à-vis the cost of the system in place?

[Helena Borges]

I don't have a number at my fingertips. They pay fuel tax. They pay registration fees for the trucks on an annual basis. There are other fees that the provinces collect. It's not the federal government. The provinces are the ones doing all the charging.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

The railways don't pay fuel tax.

[Helena Borges]

They do. Yes, railways pay.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

They pay fuel tax as well.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Mario Laframboise]

Ms. Brown, you have the floor.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you for being here, Ms. Borges.

I wanted to say thank you, first of all, for outlining all of those investments in infrastructure that the government has made in the last few years. When this government came to power, it set out a document called “Advantage Canada”. It outlined the kinds of investments that needed to be made in infrastructure to move Canada forward and to have a long-term business plan.

You talked about the investments being made in Toronto and the York region, which I represent. We're certainly seeing the results of that. We have a bridge at the south end of Aurora that's going to be rehabilitated for our GO Trains. It's going to increase capacity for our GO Trains. Commuters to Toronto are going to find that it will be a tremendous advantage to them. The number of trains is going to be increased substantially.

Your intervention in May was a good overture for us in our preparation for our trip to Washington. I want to thank you for that. We had been talking about high-speed rail. What we found was that the discussion down there is not about high-speed rail—it's about higher-speed rail. We were introduced to the Amtrak perspective on the investments that are going into the northeast corridor.

Can you talk to us about how Canada is going to interface with those corridors in the northeast? What investments are we going to need to make in order to see an advantage in the connection between us and the northeast United States?

[Helena Borges]

As you probably heard, Washington hasn't yet announced its investments. I don't know if you were told, but we met with our counterparts at the Department of Transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration in early October to get an update. I think they've received about 278 different applications totalling $103 billion worth of proposals for the $8 billion they have available right now. It will be interesting to see how they pick through those to see what investments they make.

With the services already in place, VIA, in looking at making improvements to its network, does improve some of those corridors on which Amtrak also provides services, where they connect in Niagara Falls, for example. Those improvements are happening on the Canadian side.

Until we get a sense from the U.S. side as to where their investment is going to be, much of what we're hearing about the Amtrak investment is that it's probably going to be more in the loop that does Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, New York, and New Jersey. That's where the priority is for them to bring the train speeds up to a higher level. I think they currently could operate at 110 miles per hour, but they're not. In most cases they're operating at 79 miles per hour. They will be improving that much like we're trying to do with VIA, in focusing on the corridor where VIA has the majority of the traffic. We are talking to them a lot. We are keeping a very close eye on what they're doing.

You might be surprised, and I don't know if they told you this, but the General Accounting Office met with us a year and a half or two years ago to learn from us what we do with VIA. I think they're trying to mirror what we've been doing in Canada for the last little while. Now that VIA is getting the biggest amount of money ever in its history to do all these improvements, I think it will go a long way in setting up VIA to provide much better service in the future and to work with Amtrak to try to improve the services across the key points of connection.

We are engaging with them. I think you heard from the Cascadia corridor as well. We have entered into discussions with them. They're interested in hearing some of our perspectives on what we've been doing here to try to emulate that in the British Columbia-Seattle corridor. We'll continue those discussions with them.

We've been approached by some of the states. Michigan and New York are interested both in terms of Montreal and Niagara. We'll continue those discussions and see how we can work together. If there are opportunities, we'll definitely talk to them about them.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

The bottom line is that Canadians who are going to be travelling between here and the United States are going to find that both countries have invested in improving their systems and it's going to be as seamless as possible.

[Helena Borges]

I think it's pretty seamless today. Is the speed as good as customers would like? Probably not on either side, but both countries are working to improve.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Mario Laframboise]

Mr. Jean.

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

Thank you.

I liked that so much I want to repeat it: the most money VIA has ever received in its history is from a Conservative government.

I understand somewhere in the neighbourhood of 34,000 to 35,000 people per year go back and forth between Canada and the U.S. at each of the three crossings. That's 35,000 a year total of Canadians or Americans. That's not a significant number of people. Is that correct?

[Helena Borges]

That's correct.

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

I only have a minute left, and I want to make sure I find out exactly how the federal government decides on making investments. When we went to the United States we heard in essence that Amtrak makes investments based on increasing the average speed or minimizing the travel time between two destinations. They may find a particular piece of track that needs an upgrade either for size or an additional track. How do we do it in Canada? Is it similar?

[Helena Borges]

It's similar, but we take other factors into account. For example, the funding that VIA is receiving right now is for the portions of the network on which VIA operates that are not even signalized. It's called “dark territory”. That is a huge safety concern for VIA and a big liability for VIA and the government. The number one priority is to address the safety issues VIA currently has in the corridor network. That's one criterion.

The second criterion is to try to improve on-time performance. I think Mr. Miller mentioned that things are improving, but I think he'll reinforce me when I say that just as recently as two or three years ago VIA's on-time performance in the corridor was very poor. It's been an imperative to get the service on schedule, because if it's not the customers will leave VIA, and we don't want that to happen.

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

Is this why the federal government made a $3.6 million investment on railway crossings--

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Mario Laframboise]

Your time is finished.

Mr. Scarpaleggia.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

There are a couple of contradictions between what you said and what the proponents of the Calgary-Edmonton line said when they came a couple of weeks ago. They suggested that high-speed rail networks are profitable in different countries. I had heard the opposite, quite frankly.

[Helena Borges]

We have heard the opposite also.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

They explained the perception that they are not profitable by the fact that somehow their costs and revenues are being lumped in with a money-losing business unit or something like that. In other words, for them it seemed to have been an accounting issue.

Why would they make that kind of statement? Have you studied their statement? Should someone not be writing to them to say that's not true, or there is evidence to the contrary? Where is this coming from? That calls into question the credibility of their entire presentation, really. So where is that contradiction coming from?