Transport Committee on Feb. 21st, 2017

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Good morning, everyone. Please take your places.

I call this meeting of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities to order.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are going to continue our study of infrastructure and smart communities.

Today, we are pleased to welcome more witnesses. Martin Lessard, Managing Director of the Ville de Victoriaville will be joining us by videoconference from Victoriaville. Bruce Lazenby is Head of Business Development for the Regional Group of Companies and formerly Chief Executive Officer of Invest Ottawa. James MacKay is Vice President, Sales for MacKay Meters. Lastly, Guy Picard, Director General of the Société de transport de Laval, will be joining us by videoconference from Laval.

Welcome to all the witnesses.

One of the witnesses is running late, but we hope that he will be able to join us during our time for presentations.

Let us give the floor to the witnesses right away.

We will start with Mr. Lessard, if he is ready to go.

[Martin Lessard, Managing Director, Ville de Victoriaville]

Yes, I am ready.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Okay. The picture should be coming through soon, committee members.

[Martin Lessard]

Can you hear me, Mr. Berthold?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

We can hear you loud and clear, Mr. Lessard, and now we can see you.

You have five minutes for your presentation.

[Martin Lessard]

Thank you very much.

Good morning to you, Mr. Berthold, a former colleague in the municipal world. I would also like to recognize Alain Rayes, the MP for our region.

Good morning, Mr. Rayes. I can’t see you, but I know that you’re there.

This standing committee has asked me to help with its activities on smart cities, especially regional ones. When we look at that question, which is a very broad one, we realize that the main issues for the regions are first and foremost to do with the availability of specialized workers, those able to help cities carry out their various projects.

In recent years, city council here in the Ville de Victoriaville decided to create a position for someone with expertise in social media. We used that expertise to be able to promote a certain number of projects. But, in broader terms, we are finding that our needs are much greater than that. So there is a challenge in the area of a specialized workforce.

Of course, there is also the issue of investment for smaller, or medium-sized communities. The investment required to obtain the major infrastructures that will allow our cities to become smarter is still very much a reality.

I sent my presentation notes to the committee. As you can see in the document, in our city, we see the development of a smart city as having six components: governance, smart citizens, smart economy, mobility, environment and habitat.

In certain aspects, regional cities are able to move forward by themselves. Here in Victoriaville, for example, in the governance area, we are able to improve our ability to communicate, especially with our residents, and to improve our online and webcasting systems. In that respect, there is no problem; things are going very well.

As for the idea of smart citizens, we are able to encourage citizen participation by using our internal resources to develop platforms. We have certainly done so, successfully, we feel, with our MonIdée.ca platform, for example. It allows our residents to be consulted regularly and to provide their views and opinions on the Ville de Victoriaville’s various projects.

Then we have the components of environment and habitat. For the environment, we have been able to use sensors and smart electric systems to manage our networks better. That is one aspect where a regional city is able to be active, as is also the case with a number of programs in the area of habitat.

It is a little more complicated in the areas of a smart economy or smart mobility. This is because they require more significant infrastructures. Investments are required for a municipality to acquire good systems, good applications and good infrastructure in order to meet the expectations of the residents, and especially in order to reach the smart city goals we have set. We have made progress. In Victoriaville, we have made progress in the area of equipment, such as charging stations. Our smart city focus is actually in the area of sustainable development. We have been able to deploy—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Mr. Lessard, given that we have a lot of witnesses and good number of questions to ask you, I am going to ask you to conclude your presentation.

[Martin Lessard]

So there is still a lot of work to do in that area.

In conclusion, we need funding, of course, but we also need support for businesses so that they can move to e-commerce.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lessard.

I now give the floor to Mr. Lazenby.

Welcome, Mr. Lazenby. You have the floor for five minutes.

[Bruce Lazenby, Head of Business Development, Formerly Chief Executive Officer of Invest Ottawa, Regional Group of Companies]

Thank you.

We sometimes think of the issue of urbanization as a third world issue. On average, there are about a million people a week who move from the countryside to the city in places like India and elsewhere, but the same thing is happening in North America. We're finding that rural communities are getting smaller and that the percentage of GDP coming from those communities continues to decline. Nobody is thinking of a way to put more labour into a farm; they're thinking about ways to take labour out of a farm.

When we look at that, we look at the infrastructure that we need in cities and the jobs that we're going to find in the cities. Between artificial intelligence and robotics, we're heading towards what they call “singularity”, where there's a whole different way of looking at things. Throughout that, one thing is going to remain true: we need very efficient ways to move massive amounts of data around because everything we're looking at, moving forward, is data.

If you think about how we built our initial infrastructure, if I had a home and I wanted water, I dug a well. Then my neighbour dug a well, and his neighbour dug a well. Finally, we said that it made more sense to do that as a utility and have it managed by the government, so we did that. Then we did that with roads, with rail, and with electricity. Nobody thinks about building their own electricity, and nobody digs their own well anymore, but everybody is still putting in their own bandwidth.

We have Rogers digging trenches and laying fibre. We have Bell digging trenches and laying fibre. I was at a meeting recently with the head of OC Transpo and the head of Hydro Ottawa. I asked them if they were each laying fibre, and they said yes. I asked them if they knew the other was also, and they said no. I told them that they had each dug up the same street three times, putting glass in the ground.

Fibre optics is the key to building smart infrastructure. It is the basis. You can't do anything if you don't have that. We don't have enough of it, and we don't have a strategy for it. There should be a simple policy that calls for one provider of that glass, and that stipulates that it does not need to be a for-profit product. It can be government-managed, just like water. What you do with the water when it comes out the other end is something that industries can manage on their own. We have to start thinking of bandwidth as a utility and, therefore, as one that should be managed by government.

If we can get past that hurdle, the efficiencies are phenomenal.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Thank you, Mr. Lazenby.

I now give the floor to Mr. MacKay.

Mr. MacKay, you have five minutes.

[James MacKay, Vice-President, Sales, MacKay Meters]

Thanks to the committee for having MacKay Meters here, and for the invitation to speak to you all today.

My name is James MacKay. I'm very honoured to be here today representing my company, MacKay Meters. I'm a third-generation business owner whose head office and worldwide manufacturing plant is based in a beautiful rural community called New Glasgow, Nova Scotia.

MacKay Meters has proudly been in business for just under 60 years, and our product can be found on every continent and in over 20 countries. MacKay Meters is a parking technology company that specializes in the design, manufacture, and distribution of parking hardware, along with the development of parking-related software platforms that not only control set hardware, but also help our clients, which are mainly towns, cities, universities, and hospitals, create an educated and efficient approach to their parking systems.

We use real-time data that is generated at our meters to provide financial information, maintenance alerts, map-based reporting, along with an array of important analytics that help our clients drive their systems more efficiently than traditional practices.

The parking industry has made significant technological progress over the past five to seven years. It is certainly safe to say that the parking meters are no longer dumb or stupid. The industry as a whole has seen many large, multinational, Fortune 50 companies enter with varying degrees of success. It may have something to do with the revenues that are linked to any parking system being typically the second-largest revenue generation for any community. Or, it may be the technology that has now arrived into our industry.

With the new buzzword “smart city”, coupled with the technology now available, the former simple parking meter has changed significantly, and in my opinion, is one of the keys not only to kick off but also to fund smart city initiatives throughout the country. And when I mention smart city, I don't necessarily just mean “city”. That's the buzzword. It should really be smart community; it could be smart town, smart hospital, or smart community. When I am talking about this, I am referring to large, small, and medium-sized communities being able to use this type of technology to kick off their smart initiatives.

While most are still wondering what makes their cities smart or how to make their cities smart, my company is providing cities with at least some of the answers. We produce the most technologically advanced and greenest smart parking meters in the world. We are using very efficient solar-based power supplies that render our meter battery neutral. We are using metal-equivalent materials and recycled materials that are increasing our security while reducing our carbon footprint on many levels. We use both wireless GPS and Wi-Fi networks that are available to us for real-time information and alert notifications. We do all of this while adhering to the rigid, stringent PCI PA-DSS security standards covering secure transfer of credit card payments; FCC and IC standards covering the certification of our radio and electronic equipment in both Canada and the United States; and also ISO 9001 manufacturing quality control standards.

Given that most of my clients are municipalities in North America, we have had the unique privilege of working closely with so many progressive cities out there. As they learn, we learn with them, which is fantastic. In the U.S., San Francisco is considered one of the most progressive cities in America, and is a client of ours. We are helping them make their parking system smarter by using our products. Also, Columbus, which recently won the U.S. DOT $40 million smart city challenge, after competing against 77 other cities in the United States, is also a client of ours. We are working with them to make their city smarter. In Canada, I have clients from coast to coast, such as Vancouver, Moncton, and Victoriaville. These cities are eager for technology, and we are helping them put the latest and greatest on their streets.

That said, MacKay is helping cities both near and far become smarter and greener by using Canadian-made hardware and Canadian-developed software. We bring smart technology to the streets allowing unique customer experience on the front end, while providing smart analytic software on the back end. Since our products generate revenue—and that is a good point, as our products indeed generate revenue—they are the perfect product to start with and fund any smart city strategy out there.

We do not have to look far for this technology. It is local, it is proven, and it is established. Smart and green do not have to be more expensive: on the contrary.

I am very much looking forward to any questions you might have. Thank you again for this opportunity.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Thank you very much, Mr. MacKay.

We are now going to hear from Mr. Picard, who will be giving his presentation by videoconference from Laval.

Mr. Picard, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Guy Picard, Director General, Société de transport de Laval]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I believe I sent you my presentation.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Yes, we have it. So it will be easy for us to follow you, Mr. Picard.

[Guy Picard]

Thank you for the opportunity to be part of this meeting.

Good morning also to Mr. Iacono, the MP for Alfred-Pellan.

For about 15 years, smart transportation has been in the DNA of the Société de transport de Laval. There are a number of definitions of smart transportation, but for us, it is about enhancing customer experience and influencing sustainable behaviour by using information technologies.

I will quickly go over some of the projects we have carried out that place STL among North American leaders in terms of the development of smart transportation solutions. Then I will suggest some areas worthy of exploration and research in the future.

On the next slide, About STL, the figures give you an idea of our size. Our company is located in a suburb of Montreal. It is medium-sized and has about 900 employees. Our network handles 21 million trips per year.

On the next slide, you can see that the first area in which we invested in smart transportation was information for our customers. We are in the process of implementing three projects.

The first, which we called STL Synchro, started in 2010 and involved equipping each of our vehicles with GPS so that we can provide customers with information about when their bus will arrive. We have displays in the streets and, with a mobile app, people can find out where their bus is.

In 2012, we refined that technology so that everyone using the Paratransit service receives an automatic call about the location of the vehicle 10 minutes or so prior to its arrival.

We decided to push that concept a little further. Working with a development centre for the intellectually challenged, we are in the process of developing an app that will allow people who currently use the Paratransit network to use the regular network by providing them with a companion, a helper. The helper will be able to tell them when to get on and off the bus and can guide them every step of the way to their destination. If the user goes the wrong way, an alert will be sent to the client contact centre, which can then look after that person. These are things we are working on.

We are implementing another project that involves equipping the 227 crossroads in Laval with a smart system that recognizes when a bus is arriving. We will then be able, for example, to give priority to a bus that is late by shortening the duration of a red light and increasing the duration of a green light. In a conflict between two buses, the one that is later and has more passengers on board—we know the number of passengers on board all of our buses at all times—will get the priority. Those things have already been done.

I will not go through all the points on the following slide. They deal with smarter methods of payment, such as credit cards, the development of on-demand transportation, and making full use of big data. But I will draw your attention to the second point.

The future challenge faced by transportation companies is to integrate sustainable mobility solutions. The hotel industry has been shaken up by sharing solutions such as Airbnb, and the taxi industry by Uber. In the music industry, people wanting to sell music and records have been shaken up by solutions like Spotify. Which sharing models will come along to shake up the public transit industry?

The Finns have an interesting concept called Mobility as a Service, or MaaS. The concept not only includes methods of payment, but also car-sharing, carpooling, public transport, and bike-sharing. If we want to avoid a kind of chaos, we will have to have legislation on this. I do not know if that legislation will be federal, provincial or municipal, but legislation there will have to be. We need a new mindset. Public institutions must become aware of the data and the various players, in order to come up with integrated solutions for transportation in our cities that are as optimal as we can make them—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Thank you very much, Mr. Picard. I have to interrupt you, but I am sure that there will be a number of questions that will allow you to provide more details.

My thanks to all the witnesses for their presentations.

We will start right away with a round of questions from the committee.

The floor goes to Alain Rayes, for six minutes.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to all the witnesses for taking the time today to come to tell us about their initiatives and their expertise.

My first question goes to Mr. Lessard.

First of all, I would like everyone to know that we know each other very well. Mr. Lessard was the Managing Director of the Ville de Victoriaville when I was its mayor. So I am very familiar with most of the projects going on in the city, as well with as a number of the difficulties that the various programs cause for small and medium-sized municipalities.

Mr. Lessard, in your presentation, you mentioned two problems, two future issues for your municipality. The first was about the funding for infrastructures and the second was about e-commerce.

My first question is about the infrastructures. We know that the federal government currently wants to invest billions of dollars in infrastructure. The first idea that comes to people's minds when they hear talk of infrastructures is concrete, asphalt, bridges and tunnels. It is rare to hear talk about technological infrastructures that should be put in place in various areas and that the witnesses who have appeared at the committee today have talked about.

When a call for tenders goes out, people do not necessarily have the standards involved. I asked this question last week and I am now also asking you. Should the government establish technological standards for calls for tender, as it does for the environmental standards that are being included in calls for tender? The first criterion considered in tendering is the price. Efficiency and economies of scale are not necessarily considered. Could the idea of having technological, smart standards be helpful for municipalities so that they can look to the future in the projects they want to establish?

[Martin Lessard]

Thank you very much. That is an excellent question.

Of course, Canada is very big. At first sight, if technological standards were to be imposed across Canada, it could cause some difficulties, especially with the ability of our local staff to work with one standard rather than another.

Generally, municipalities will demand more autonomy, of course. They will ask to be able to make choices, including technological choices, which will allow them, for example, to have different suppliers compete so that they get the best price possible for their residents.

I have never been asked that question. The need to impose one standard is not something that has been brought to me either. There would certainly be advantages in proceeding along those lines, but, given the extremely rapid evolution of technology, perhaps it is preferable to give municipalities some room to manoeuvre so that they can choose the technology with which they are comfortable working.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

My second question is along the same lines.

Do you have the impression that current federal programs give municipalities that autonomy so that they can implement projects that allow them to be smarter? Or do the feds try to control things, given that the municipalities are the third level of government?

Do you feel you have the autonomy you need to do what you want to do? Would it not be preferable for allocated funds to be decentralized, accepting that you will subsequently have to account for them, so that municipalities can be more proactive and can work more quickly with the private businesses in their area, so that they can move their projects forward?

[Martin Lessard]

Mr. Rayes, you were formerly a mayor, and the vice chair of the Union des municipalités du Québec. So you are very familiar with this area, and the position that the municipalities take on the matter.

Clearly, all the programs that provide municipalities with more manoeuvring room and autonomy are welcome. In that context, I should recognize the Programme de la taxe sur l'essence et de la contribution du Québec 2014-2018, or what we in the business generally call the TECQ. It is a wonderful example of a program that allows us to act. Thanks to that program, municipalities know how much money they will be receiving each year. The program still has some restrictions, but they have been reduced to an extent. So it gives us room to manoeuvre and a degree of autonomy. That is the kind of approach that we must be moving towards.

Municipalities are a level of government that is very close to the general public. Municipalities are also being asked to consult their residents more, to respond to their needs and to make sure that they take part in democratic life. That requires that they have autonomy in the way they use the funding they have been allocated.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

I have one last question.

You talked about e-commerce. What challenge do municipalities face in these times when more and more people are buying online, especially the generation behind us? What kind of assistance could be provided to municipalities to help them meet that challenge?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Mr. Lessard, you have 15 seconds for your answer.

[Martin Lessard]

A little while ago, I had to wrap up when talking about this exciting topic, and now I am being told once again that I do not have much time.

I will just say that the problem is that businesses in the regions have not yet turned the corner into e-commerce. That is a problem that has to be addressed.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lessard.

Mr. Iacono now has the floor, for six minutes.