Transport Committee on Feb. 7th, 2017

[Colin McKay]

Thank you very much.

I think we also need to look at the tools that are available to the federal government and at how a strategy might guide the better implementation of those tools. We've heard from both my colleagues here about the need for flexible regulations that allow for experimentation across different products and technologies, and the availability of test beds across different communities. But this needs to be tied in at the federal level to decisions we're making about substantial infrastructure investments, and it needs to be tied into decisions we're making about how we structure the regulations around urban living for the foreseeable future—and I'm going to underline urban living as separate from transportation. While Mr. Kirk painted a picture of 2020 and then 2030 and then 50 years from now, I think we're really in a much more accelerated time frame.

We're going to be looking at a vision in which urban centres and communities will be changing fundamentally. The infrastructure investments we're making around concrete and asphalt and telephone poles won't meet the challenge of having a truly implemented smart-city strategy across the country.

Where the federal government can land is identifying those areas in which there needs to be intense concentration on the cost-benefit analysis and what the federal government can do to reduce the cost and amplify the benefit in partnership with both community governments and organizers, and then the private sector. It is a fundamental challenge.

Unfortunately, there are many companies that are working in the space of connected cities, connected communities, smart cities, or automated vehicles, but they don't have the datasets and they don't have the resources to do the fundamental quantitative analysis around the impact that will inform decision-making for hundreds of billions of dollars in the near future.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you.

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

You pretty much answered my question, but you took me down memory lane when you were speaking, so I'm going to share my thoughts with you.

I remember studying Hobbes in my undergrad, and he argued that a rational monarchy would empower its people in order for them to survive, so if you keep them rich, you'll stay rich. Just drawing some parallels there, how can the government make money off of empowering people? The currency has changed—information technology, access—we want everyone to have that, but then how do we generate revenue from it in smart cities?

[Colin McKay]

The response isn't really about making money but is more in response to your question around empowering citizens. If we have a fully informed way of making infrastructure investment decisions, we'll be able to allocate resources to more important government services and services within the community. Instead of highway infrastructure costs, we'll be able to invest in health care costs.

As Mr. Kirk hinted, we'll have fewer injuries on the roads, which will also free up health care costs, which will allow us to spend more on social services. We in fact will have a more equitable government that serves citizens' needs more clearly because we'll have broken free of these bonds of 100 years' worth of infrastructure investments by using these resources much more efficiently.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. McKay.

Monsieur Aubin.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses for being with us today.

What a vast topic, if I may say so, for a computer dinosaur like me. Let me tell you from the outset that I have a really hard time with the concept of smart cities. Before we describe the concept as smart, we should talk more about connected cities.

My first question is for you, Mr. McKay. I would like to take advantage of your dual expertise, both at Google and as a former employee of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

For those connected cities to grow, it will also mean that a lot of data must be collected. How can we reconcile the development of connected cities with ethics in terms of personal data?

[Colin McKay]

Thank you for the very informed question.

I think we need to consider data as split into two very separate streams when we talk about connected cities.

One is, as you mention, personal data that's identifiable to an individual and relates to the decisions that individual makes in interactions with government and with private sector companies.

In the broad concepts that I described in my notes, I was dealing more with de-identified data, aggregated data, the sort of information that is collected by your phone in terms of motion and distance and speed. This is the information that allows companies like Google, Apple, and others to give you traffic information. When you look at the map, you don't identify a single driver; you identify the trends that were collected from thousands of drivers on the road at the same time as you. It's the same with many of these other more generalized services. The implemented technology has privacy safeguards that aggregate the data to a level that allows you to have precision about location or behaviour, without having precision to the level of an individual.

I just want to make the final point that you're right in identifying that there's a shared responsibility there. If you're using an Apple phone or a Google phone, you need to understand that the phone manufacturer, the company, and the application developer have your interests in mind. Government agencies and their partners also recognize that there must be an imperative to protect personal privacy in implementing those technologies.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

My second question is for everyone, but I will first ask Mr. Kirk since I drew my inspiration from his remarks.

When you said that Canada was dead last, I was wondering what we could do to give priority to all the aspects that make our cities more and more connected. Transportation is not the only aspect.

I was thinking of my recent trip to Africa where I noticed that most Africans now have a cellphone. They skipped directly to the cellphone without going through the stage of having landline telephones at home.

That made me think of our case, in particularly the federal government, and the fact that we don't even have a program for buying electric cars. Are we not in the same situation where we'll have to skip over one type of technology to go directly to a more advanced one that is worthy of the future?

You can tell me whether the future is in 10 or 15 years.

[Barrie Kirk]

That's an excellent question, and I agree with you. Looking 10 to 15 years ahead, I see, potentially, the end of infrastructure. There's a lot of work going on with the old Jetsons vision of a driverless car. In Europe, Airbus has spoken about its program to develop a pilotless drone to carry people. It will be electric, with vertical takeoff and landing, and it will be a potential replacement for cars for commuters in the future. They plan to have a full-scale demonstration by the end of this year.

Uber has announced that it will start offering a service to carry people using pilotless drones within 10 years. This technology is moving very quickly. In Canada, we have an excellent drone industry. I am on the board of Unmanned Systems Canada, an association for the drone industry. I think we can build on that technology and leapfrog self-driving cars, if you like...well, not leapfrog completely, but move towards the future, which is flying cars and three-dimensional highways. It's no longer science fiction. It is being seriously looked at.

I also want to mention that Ontario's Ministry of Transportation has a wonderful visioning program under way now to look at transportation in the Golden Horseshoe for the next 50 years, with an extension for another 10 or 20 years beyond that. We all realize that any vision for transportation in 2050 or 2070 will be wrong, but I applaud them for having the guts to look that far ahead, make those kinds of decisions, and have those visions that will help to inform short-term decisions.

So, yes. If there were some money available, I'd love to see the government put it towards flying cars.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

I'm sorry, Monsieur Aubin, your time is up.

Mr. Hardie, go ahead.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It's a fascinating discussion, but with respect, you seem to have anchored yourself—and I'm asking you to disabuse me of this notion—on a very old model, to the point where, when you're looking at the future, it's like you have one foot on the dock and one on the boat. I've heard an awful lot today and in our previous session about driverless cars and flying cars, but do you not think that, in fact, in our rapidly connected world, the need to actually move about is going to decline substantially?

We're going back to the future already. When I was a kid, they delivered milk and bread to my door, and they're doing it again. Are we necessarily thinking about the right things in imagining this wonderful future? I'll just leave that.

We'll start with Dr. Taiber, please.

[Joachim G. Taiber]

You're on the right path. I do think that the connectivity means that we don't have to travel that much or move that much. However, keep in mind that a lot of the traffic issues are from commuters who are going from suburban areas to urban cores, for example. Do we have, with the millennials, a trend that they want to live in more urban environments? If so, then they still have a need to move around. They might have some conveniences, as you mentioned, such as goods delivered to their door. I think you're right in the sense that the need for transportation and the patterns are changing, but we still need transportation.

The technology is currently changing in such a way that the services we are using will be different in the future. We have new options. That's how I would see it.

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

I'd love to hear others. Feel free to submit things after the fact.

Mr. McKay, go ahead, quickly, please.

[Colin McKay]

I hinted, in my remarks, at the idea of having to focus our experimentation and implementation on districts. This is going to hit at some of the major changes that you're imagining and I think we're all imagining. It's also a bit to Monsieur Aubin's point, which is that we need to get into a phase of implementation rather than experimentation, and that's going to require a really focused concentration on changes that are significant to communities.

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

All right. Maybe I can interject there because I have a couple more questions, and then I'll just leave it open.

Where is the public in this? What does the public tell you they want? There are a lot of bright-eyed innovators out there scheming and putting forward things, and the public is going, “Oh God, what's going to hit us next?” Are we talking to the public about what they want?

Second, where do you sit on the degree to which we bring about this change: social engineering versus attractive options that manage demand?

We'll start with you, Mr. Kirk.

[Barrie Kirk]

When you asked the question, my mind went back to that very famous quote from Henry Ford that if you had asked people what they wanted in those days, they would have said “faster horses”. When I talk to people today—and I do a lot of speaking—there are three different responses. There is a general acceptance that self-driving cars are going to be wonderful for seniors and handicapped people and really improve their mobility. They're going to be one of the early adopters. The other group of early adopters will be millennials, who, studies have shown, have not taken to driving or car ownership in the way my generation did. The daughter of a friend of mine says that she doesn't like to drive because it's a big distraction from her texting.

For the middle part, the middle-aged people who were brought up in a culture of getting your driver's licence and your car at the earliest opportunity, it's going to be really difficult to get that steering wheel out of their hands, but I do see a progression. Nobody enjoys commuting in heavy traffic. I see car-driving changing. I see people using driverless taxis for the unpleasant stuff, commuting. I see people keeping an old-fashioned car, with a steering wheel, in the garage so they can go out on the weekend and have fun.

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

To what degree does government swoop in and start to impose things versus you guys coming up with stuff so that people say, “I have to have that”?

[Joachim G. Taiber]

What I want to suggest is to really work with these pilots and test bed areas, because that's a way you can show the technology to the public, get feedback, and then, by learning from their reactions and thoughts, make a decision over time as a federal government about what you really want to prioritize. I think that's an important aspect.

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

With this interconnected world of ours, does the concept of clusters really matter anymore? Is it necessary to co-site a variety of complementary activities?

[Barrie Kirk]

Can I start?

In January I submitted to the Government of Ontario a white paper specifically on the creation of four AV innovation centres. I'm waiting for some official feedback on that. I know the Ontario government is very keen on that. Premier Wynne has said she wants that to happen. It is very important at this stage to have those clusters and I'd love to see Ontario do this. I also know that the Ontario government wants these to be collaborative efforts with the federal government.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Kirk.

We're now on to Ms. Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I'm sorry, I had that wrong. We're on to Mr. Badawey. Kelly, I was trying to give you an extra opportunity.

Mr. Badawey.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am really excited about this conversation because it validates what this committee has been doing for the past few months in terms of proposing different directions with respect to strategy vis-à-vis the national transportation strategy, which also includes the innovation program as well as the infrastructure of smart communities that we're trying to embark on. With that, it also validates the government's direction with respect to those same initiatives, and I applaud you for aligning those dots in tandem with those strategies because, simply put, that is 2017 and beyond.

I also applaud you in recognizing the investments that have to be made through our infrastructure programs to once again align with those very strategies and satisfy the recommendations that are going to come out from those strategies.

I want to state from the onset that I do encourage your continued participation with us to make this happen, and then, as was mentioned, to start on a process of implementation and execution beyond the talk, and of course, the politics. Sometimes that gets in the way of just simply trying to do better and be better with respect to a nation.

With that, I'll lead off with a question, and I'll keep it very broad in terms of your thoughts with respect to sustainable funding sources. Being from Ontario, I'm sure, Mr. Kirk, you recognize that we do have an opportunity through the Municipal Act to offer municipalities incentives through community improvement plans, growth plans, to then work with the private sector to put in place those very strategies.

We also have a gas tax that the federal government has offered the nation with respect to sustainable funding to then do infrastructure work with.

Do you feel that the federal government should or can look forward beyond 2017 to a sustainable funding source similar to the gas tax to, therefore, satisfy recommendations that are a result of community improvement growth plans that municipalities have put in place as part of their economic and growth strategies?

[Barrie Kirk]

That's a great question. The answer is obviously, yes. What form that should take, I'm not quite sure, but you've mentioned some options there.

I would also add in parallel with that it needs to have an outreach program. We, in CAVCOE, and a partner of ours in Paris have just responded to a request for proposals from the Government of France. As part of their outreach, they are planning a series of workshops all over France and a newsletter from the Government of France to help inform and educate people in municipalities and in the private sector about the opportunities. That is one thing the federal government could do as part of outreach education. France is doing that.

Just having the money available is one thing but you also need to educate people. There are a lot of people who don't really know enough yet about what's happening.