Evidence of meeting #46 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was bombardier.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director, Marketing and Product Planning, Bombardier Transportation North America, Bombardier Inc.
No, for the past two years they've created.... The Transit Rail Advisory Committee for Safety has been there for a long time. They've created an engineering task force for the past two years.
We've been looking, along with the FRA, at what really happens if you mix and match European and North American designs. Now that the European designs include crash energy management technology and you have a lot of improved crash avoidance technology, it turns out that you can mix and match quite safely. Now they—
Conservative
Director, Marketing and Product Planning, Bombardier Transportation North America, Bombardier Inc.
No.
Director, Marketing and Product Planning, Bombardier Transportation North America, Bombardier Inc.
So a low-hanging fruit would be to look at what the FRA has been doing and adapt Canadian regulations in a similar way.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Can you draft a very precise proposal to that end, as quickly as possible? We're going to be having officials here on Thursday. I realize it's a tight timeline, but that's the reality. If you want us to have those proposals brought before our officials, we'll need to have them within the next 24 hours. We will ask them very clearly, and potentially we'll produce a recommendation favourable to that outcome.
How much time do I have?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
You have about two seconds, so you're out of time, Mr. Poilievre.
Mr. Sullivan, five minutes.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Thank you.
I think we're starting to grasp what Mr. Binns and Mr. Fuller have been saying about the FRA compliance regulations. As I understand it, the Canadian system, with a couple of exceptions—one being the O-Train and one being in northern Ontario, and by waiver only—regularly applies the FRA rules. We simply look at the U.S. and say whatever is good for them is good for us, essentially.
What you're saying is that we should be aggressively looking at European-style standards in order to permit off-the-shelf vehicles, because there is no manufacturer in North America that's building FRA-compliant DMUs or FRA-compliant EMUs in any large way. Bombardier certainly isn't.
Director, Marketing and Product Planning, Bombardier Transportation North America, Bombardier Inc.
We produce thousands of FRA-compliant EMUs—
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
EMUs, right, but we don't have an electrified rail system, so they're not useful here in Canada.
Director, Marketing and Product Planning, Bombardier Transportation North America, Bombardier Inc.
—but DMUs, no.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
DMU is where several of the rail systems are going, but they're not able to purchase Canadian-made.
Mr. Fuller and Mr. Binns, there are two essential things that have to happen. One is PTC, which you didn't spell out, but it's positive train control. This means that it's not reliant on somebody seeing a light through the fog before they stop a train. It's actually electronics that are transmitted to the train to say, hey, slow down. Perhaps this would have stopped the tragic accident in the Niagara region last spring. But positive train control plus some form of temporal separation...and temporal separation requirements require the cooperation of the freight railways. We don't have a whole lot of cooperation from the freight railways. I don't know if you've heard about what's going on in Montreal. Montreal wants to electrify their rail lines and the freight railroads are saying, “No, we're not going to let you. We don't like electric wires over our trains.”
Could you comment about those two aspects, Mr. Fuller and Mr. Binns? What is it that we should be aggressively doing to move us in those directions?
Equipment Engineer, Paladin Consulting
I can understand the resistance to electrification, primarily in a country that really hasn't had it in its history. I can tell you about our experience in North America. We operate freight trains up and down the northeast corridor every single day. There's nothing inherently that conflicts with freight movements when having overhead wires—other than a corporate desire to cooperate. I'll leave it at that.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
CN and CP aren't interested in cooperating, but maybe this is a place where the federal government ought to be looking at pushing, aggressively leaning on these big freight railroads to be cooperative when it comes to passenger rail. That's one of the problems with passenger rail in this country; we don't have that cooperation.
I also heard someone talk about local content requirements in other countries. We don't really have any local content requirements in Canada for passenger rail manufacture. I know we do sole source our subway trains out of Bombardier in Toronto, but that's not a result of local content requirements. It's one of the places where the free trade systems aren't working for Canada. The U.S. has local content requirements, so companies like EMD move to Illinois because they know they have to be able to manufacture there. We don't have such a requirement here in Canada, so it's a disadvantage to the Canadian worker and to the Canadian economy.
Could you comment, some of the Bombardier folks, on what we should be doing in our free trade agreements to make sure there's a level playing field?
Vice-President, Government Affairs, Bombardier Inc.
From our perspective, in public policy terms, I think you're absolutely right, it's a matter of leveling the playing field. It has become increasingly difficult for Bombardier, from our operations in Canada, to be able to export to other markets, particularly in the U.S., where there are local content requirements or the buy American provisions.
In Canada the local content requirements do exist in two provinces: Ontario and Quebec. I believe in Ontario the threshold is a 25% local content requirement for a number of areas, including rail transit projects. In Quebec it's a 50% local content requirement for, again, a number of areas, including rail transit projects.
I've already alluded to free trade agreements being very helpful for Bombardier, a very export-oriented company. It's not only export. We're also investing considerably in international markets. Free trade agreements can also help on that front.
With respect to government procurement, certainly we would want a balanced outcome from the agreements, not to give up our capacity to develop technologies and manufacture here in Canada, bearing in mind the environment I just described.
Conservative
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I'd like to thank our guests for coming in today. I found this very insightful. We have two different discussions, in a sense. We have the cars and the whole issue of electricity. We have rails, and I guess electricity is potentially the common talking point here.
Mr. Wolf, I'd like to ask you a little bit about what you've indicated with respect to electric vehicles. I heard you mention that hybrids represent some 2% to 3% of the market worldwide. Is it strictly in Israel that you have a strong market share? I thought there might be more than one country.
Could you give us some idea of your market penetration?
Vice-President, North America, Better Place
We have markets up and running country-wide in Israel and Denmark, and smaller-scale demonstrations and beginnings of operations in the Netherlands, China, Australia, California, and Hawaii. The first two markets that went live—as I said, it's a network approach—are Israel and Denmark. You can go to a dealership today and buy an electric car that is cheaper than a gasoline car, and your monthly payment for the kilometres is cheaper than what you would have paid for gasoline. Those are the countries we are operating in right now.
Conservative
Vice-President, North America, Better Place
Our partnership is with Renault. Renault is a French partner of the Renault-Nissan Alliance. They have a facility in Turkey that can produce up to 100,000 of these switchable batteries. They are called Renault Fluence Z.E., that is, zero emissions.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
It's interesting. You have made the comment that they can be manufactured cheaper. I am looking at some information from a previous witness. Magna indicated that it was about $12,000 to $15,000 more expensive for the electric capacity. Can you comment on that? How can they be that wrong?
Vice-President, North America, Better Place
It's not that wrong. If you include the battery, you get to exactly that number. You take a $30,000 to $35,000 car, and $12,000 is battery. But take that out, and you are talking about a $22,000 car. Then you get almost to parity, depending on which types of accessories you have with gasoline cars. We are currently selling in two markets around the world. This is not with any kind of external help. We are selling cars that cost less than the equivalent gasoline vehicle. It's not Better Place; it is Renault that is selling these cars at that price.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Would they do that without subsidy, presumably? Is that what you are saying?