Transport Committee on Sept. 24th, 2018

[Bruce Burrows]

Yes, if I could.

Partly because of my personal and business background, I've always been a big proponent of integrated multimodal approaches and policies. Perhaps carrying that point further from Bruce, I think that is huge, and I did hear some ultimate discussion about this. In terms of the more integrated we can be from a policy perspective, a customer ultimately doesn't care how his or her product gets from A to B, as long as it gets there on time, in the right condition, at the best price. They don't care what mode is used. We have to take that customer focus as we approach policy issues, so that anything that can be done to encourage better integration of modes is a good thing to do.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Who do you think should lead it?

Who should convene all the players and collect all the disparate thoughts, ideas, asks, and so on, and put it into something that looks coherent, but more importantly, maps out what people are covering and what they're thinking about, and identifies the gaps and tries to close those so that at the end of the day you have something that you can bring to a government—federal, provincial or even municipal—and say, “You know what, we all agree that this is a good way forward”?

[Bruce Burrows]

The Minister of Transport is the ultimate custodian of policy across the country from a transportation perspective. He is certainly in a good position to call stakeholders and convene stakeholders, working towards that approach. I would suggest that the ministry tends to work in silos. From my experience over the years, it certainly is even more siloed at the provincial level.

There is an interesting community of deputies and an interesting community of ministers of transport across the country. They're in a good position to try to bring all the stakeholders together. There isn't really an institution outside of government that's in a position to pull a lot of people together. There are some regional groups, but there aren't any truly national groups that could do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Liepert.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

I'll follow along from Ken's question and maybe be a little more blunt.

I'm probably not going to get a lot of agreement around the table, but in listening today to the St. Lawrence Seaway authority, multiple port authorities, multiple bridge commissions and authorities, not to mention a slew of municipal governments, my conclusion is that this area is overly governed. I don't profess to know exactly who is responsible for what, but it seems to me that we have a lot of people working for what I would call quasi-government agencies and I don't know how much value is being added by them all being independent of one another.

In a previous life, 10 years ago, I was a minister of health in Alberta. We had nine regional health authorities. We had four other authorities: the cancer board, the alcohol and drug abuse commission, and whatnot. With the stroke of a pen, we got rid of them all and had one authority, called Alberta Health Services, which is responsible for the delivery of health care throughout the province of Alberta. Costs have gone down. Working together has gone up. Service has certainly not declined.

One of the things I've concluded, unless somebody can show me differently, is that this seems to be an area that is overly governed.

That's all I have to say. If anybody wants to make a comment, go right ahead.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Holloway.

[Llewellyn Holloway]

With all due respect, sir, when you were in Alberta you had complete control and you were able to do that with the stroke of a pen.

Take the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission. It was formed in 1939 by a joint resolution of the U.S. Congress. It has board members appointed by the Premier of Ontario and appointed by the Governor of New York. It's an international entity. It operates under the auspices of the United States government under the rules of the United States government, and under the Ontario Extra-Provincial Corporations Act. The Peace Bridge was formed by Canada and it's an international compact, and it's New York state on the U.S. side. To make a change just to join the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission and the Peace Bridge you would need agreement from the federal government of the United States, New York state, the Province of Ontario, and Canada.

The other bridge commissions along the border have their own charters. I am not too familiar with the seaway's but I would assume that they're under the same thing. The fact of the matter is that these bridge commissions are extremely well run. They have the bare minimum of staff and they run very efficiently. The issue has been dealing with customs on both sides of the border. For the bridges across the international border, without customs on each side the traffic would flow smoothly. There are billions of dollars of trade across the river every day.

As for what the situation is like, for example, when the western hemisphere travel initiative was implemented, before that you could cross the bridge in about 30 seconds, the average processing time. People would go across for dinner. They'd go across for pizza and wings. They would go across for any reason that you would want to think of. It was a big community. That all changed with the western hemisphere travel initiative, and if you want to talk to the Niagara Parks Commission their traffic dropped like a stone.

When 9/11 occurred the average processing time jumped to two minutes. The border came to a grinding halt effectively, and now it's down to about a minute on average, and if you got NEXUS you could probably get it down to about 27 seconds.

The issue here is not the number of organizations. The issue here is simply having the border community, meaning the customs officials on both sides of the border, working in harmony to allow for the processing of traffic in a very effective way. That's what all this is about.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

I understand it's more complex because we're involved with two countries. But I would say that if we are able to negotiate a free trade agreement between two countries, we could figure out a way that several bridge commissions could work together and maybe work as one. That would be my point.

[Llewellyn Holloway]

That happens.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

But they all have their independent authorities, with all their own staff and everything else, I presume.

[Llewellyn Holloway]

I'd liken that to when we were going to amalgamate the municipalities of Toronto, York and North York, and we were going to make it more efficient and reduce the number of staff. Tell me how that worked out.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

It depends on which way you approach it.

[Llewellyn Holloway]

Exactly. I was a CAO in municipal government before, and it's not how large it is. It's how efficient it is. What we found out in the amalgamation of municipalities is that in some cases where you have very small municipalities, it worked, and in cases like Toronto and Chatham-Kent and other areas, at the end of the day there were no savings, period.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Korosec, do you want follow up on that?

[Stan Korosec]

Perhaps I can follow up on Lew's comments and your additional question there.

We do work together. We all work together for the common good. Our goal is to make the border efficient and safe. We have to remember security. You can never question security. I was an OPP officer for 20 years, so I know that, but it's how we can facilitate trade and commerce while respecting the goals of both CBSA and CBP.

It's not inefficient that we're all separate border operators, because we all have the same goal. Being all one wouldn't make a difference, but we do recognize that there are so many. I say, when you work at the border, everything is times two.

We had a mentally ill person who had threatened to jump off our bridge this morning. There were some 50 cruisers there. You had everything times two, all the Canadian responders, all the U.S. responders there, and everybody working together to do it. It's a very complex place. We realize that there are these external stakeholders that affect the border, which is a very complicated place.

That's why we have the Bridge and Tunnel Operators Association. Many of us belong to what's called the Can/Am Border Trade Alliance, which you must have heard of. That's border operators. That's customs on both sides. It's brokers. It's trucking. It brings together the whole border community together to work on solutions that we can bring forward to the government.

There's the transportation border working group, which is Transport Canada and the Federal Highway Administration. We belong to that and meet there. There's the Border Trade Alliance. Every acronym in the book, we belong to, to try to get with the right people and make the border work better.

There are acts of Congress. For the Ambassador Bridge, the Canadian Transit Company was incorporated through an act of Parliament in 1927. I don't think that all the governance models being different has any effect on how we do our work. We all work together, because if I can come up with an idea that makes my bridge work better, it helps Ron at his, and as we heard earlier from Ken, at his. We truly all work together with one common goal.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Long, you had wanted to comment on that. Go ahead.

[Gary Long]

With respect to your governance question, it's conceivable that public sector governance in the province of Ontario could look different four years from now. Public sector governance in Niagara might look different four years from now, because Premier Ford and his cabinet have indicated that they want to review how people are governed in the province.

Personally speaking and professionally speaking, I support that review. Given the number of entities in Niagara, to your point, it is difficult to reach a consensus, but I can tell you that there is a Niagara position. In fact, I would argue that there is a Hamilton-Niagara position, unified in terms of working together, working collaboratively on a blueprint for Hamilton-Niagara to ensure that this is a key trade corridor within Canada's economy.

We don't always get that agreement and unified position. To your point, on other issues it is difficult, but this is one issue where there is unity and a common position. I don't see the current governance model being a stumbling block to our ability to work with the federal government or any of the federal parties to secure some strategic investment for the trade corridor here.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Badawey.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Today was very interesting. We received loud and clear the individual interests as it relates to the different participants, but the overwhelming message that I received was to establish a strategy that takes into consideration individual participants—recognizing those folks who weren't here, the mandates attached to the same—as well as the need to work together to complement and strengthen local and national trade corridors. That's locally here within the region, beyond that within all of southern Ontario, the province of Ontario, and of course, feeding into an ultimate national trade corridor strategy.

The second part and the take-away I got from today was to establish, yes, an understanding of individual needs; however, consensus has been recognized that the trade corridor blueprint can only be accomplished if everyone is around the table. Thus, my question to you is very simple, and I think someone asked it earlier. How do we accomplish that?

The minister can in fact convene a process, which he has already, which is the trade corridor strategy, probably times six. Currently, we have three recognized trade corridors. One is the Asia-Pacific, the other is Ontario-Quebec, and the last one is the Atlantic region, but how do we expand that? How do we put more substance to those trade corridors as it relates to the assets that we have available to us?

It's unrealistic to think Minister Garneau is going to go out and start beyond what he has already done, working individually with the different regions, for obvious reasons. However, what I think is doable and what's realistic is that we have people such as his ministry, departments, this committee, individuals who can in fact start that process. Again, I throw the question back at you folks as a take-away: Where do we go from here? What are your thoughts on how we accomplish it, and in the short-term, how do we put together a trade corridor strategy that doesn't just lend itself to Niagara-Hamilton but ultimately to southwestern Ontario, the province of Ontario, and of course, feed into the broader trade corridor strategy, as well as the ports modernization review that the minister has also recognized?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Who would like to start?

[Stan Korosec]

I'll take a shot, since nobody else seems to want to.

That's a good point. In our border world, when we sit down and talk around the bar and have a beer, Ottawa and Washington wouldn't know a border if they tripped over it. I'm glad you're going to the Peace Bridge to take a look at it, and you're welcome to come down to the Ambassador Bridge anytime. You really have to get there first. It's quite a remarkable place.

You can look at statistics. I rattled off a whole bunch. However, until you go down to the border and actually see what's happening there, for policy-makers and decision-makers such as you guys are, that's very key. People I've brought down to the border from both countries say, “Oh my gosh, I didn't realize.” You talk to the people on the ground and the port directors who are there. When a decision is made in a cubicle in Ottawa or Washington by bureaucrats, they don't see the effect and we're often not consulted on it. It comes out of the blue and we go, “Oh my God, it's going to cause backups for miles and miles if they implement this.” That's why we try to keep an eye on these things and try to attack them.

The education part is really important for yourselves. I know you're well versed on border stuff, but there are people who are not near a border crossing but their ridings, their economy, depend on it. No matter where you are in Canada, it's really important to come down and understand. Talk to us and the local customs on both sides of the border and you'll hear their views on what happens.

That's one suggestion, anyway.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

I thank you, Stan. All day, I've heard a consistent message about the issues, needs and desires in terms of investments, policy, legislation, technology, data and integration. I was talking to the analysts earlier. I think they heard it loud and clear as well, with respect to the message, overall, being individual to the participants in today's sessions.

However, the whole reason we came down here was to add to the overall value. Putting politics aside, we're getting down to business here. The whole reason we came down here, and why we are going to travel to the Asia-Pacific and, hopefully, to Montreal and the Atlantic region in the future, is to add to the overall value of what the minister is trying to accomplish here, which is well overdue. I think the Emerson report identified that, within both the national transportation strategy and trade corridor ports modernization.

I'll ask this a bit more bluntly. Maybe it's rhetorical, because some of you have already answered this question. Again, as a take-away from today's session, is there an appetite for you and for other participants that you work with on a daily basis to take the next step, to establish that trade corridor blueprint for Niagara and Hamilton and even expand into southwestern Ontario, going as far as Windsor-Detroit and even to the bottom end of the GTA?

It would be a blueprint that looks at the multimodal network and at the St. Lawrence Seaway, for example, and at CN Rail, CP Rail, roadways and airports, etc. Is there an appetite for all of you to actually be around this table over the course of the next few months to work toward that blueprint?

[Ron Reinas]

Certainly, talking from the Peace Bridge perspective, yes, absolutely. We've been talking about a trade corridor for the last 20 years. If you talk to any of the border crossing operators, I think they'll say the same thing. Absolutely there's an appetite, because we've recognized that's the only way the border works.

Again, you have to go back to what I said earlier. It can't be just a trade corridor that's here. You have to deal with western New York. You have to deal with the United States because it doesn't work if you're only doing half a loaf. It's about whole loaves. Sometimes I think we forget that there's a big picture but that it starts with doing some little things that make a lot of sense and with having an understanding as to what Canadian policy means for the border.

For example, the NAFTA discussions are under way right now. If Canada changes the de minimis requirements under NAFTA, that could have a tremendous impact on the border, maybe not a positive one for the Canadian economy, but as a border crossing operator we could get a lot of revenue if the de minimis goes from $20 to $400. Most of the Canadian population is within a couple of hundred miles of the border. They may very well flood across the border, but what does that mean for the retail sector? For us, it's great. It's more toll revenue. It does all of those things. Again, there has to be an understanding of what that means.

It's the same thing with the carbon tax. If the carbon tax raises the gas price by 40¢ or 50¢ a gallon, you're going to see people going across the border to shop. That's not the same thing as Americans coming over here, which is what I think you really want to see when you have a trade corridor: that it works well both ways.

While we certainly want to be a participant in there, understand what Canadian policy-makers need to understand about how that works and do the little things that make sense. It doesn't make any sense for the national transportation corridor fund, which the government...and we're the beneficiary of that. We're getting $2.5 million. It's a small amount of money in the overall scheme of things. We're putting in RFID in every lane. Did you know that CBSA didn't even know that we were getting that money? We talk about understanding what somebody else is doing. They didn't even know we were doing that. One arm of the government doesn't know what the other arm of the government is doing. That's frustrating.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Very much so.

We have Mr. Jeneroux and Monsieur Aubin with some questions yet. We're almost at seven o'clock. Could we do that?

Go ahead, Mr. Jeneroux.

[Matt Jeneroux]

I'll try to be quick, Madam Chair.

Mr. Korosec, I definitely can't let you get out of here without having you answer a few questions that I've raised in the last little while. I'm hoping you can help me out a bit.

I would absolutely love to take you up on your offer and visit the Ambassador Bridge. I'm serious about that. I'll certainly be reaching out to you afterwards to see it first-hand.

A lot of the statistics you quoted show that traffic is down, yet your bridge has requested and received a permit from the government to increase lanes at the same time that the Gordie Howe bridge is under construction. Again, enlighten me on why that was the case from your end. I'll see what we can then tell Canadians about the reason why your specific bridge needs more lanes when four kilometres down the road there's another bridge.