Evidence of meeting #96 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was vehicle.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
Speaking of that, in terms of both sides of the border—internationally, actually—has the industry also looked at not just the vehicles, but at integrating transportation methods, working with, for example, air, water, rail, and the vehicles themselves?
President, Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association
I can tell you how we manufacture vehicles. Because we're a highly integrated industry, we move things back and forth across the border as many as six or seven times a day toward the final product. We are true multimodal companies, in the sense that we'll use trucks, we'll use rail, and we will use marine and air as the case may be.
Air, of course, in our business, is extremely expensive, but if you have an assembly line that goes down, stops, that's roughly about $1.5 million lost revenue per hour, so we do what it takes. We are truly multimodal, going from one to the other, and they're fully interconnected.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to ask Madam Kargas a question and give her an opportunity to explain.
You made a pretty bold recommendation that all autonomous vehicles must have electric propulsion. That is a pretty strong recommendation. From many of the expert reports I have read, the internal combustion engine is going to be around for a while, so maybe you could tell us exactly what you mean when you say that all autonomous vehicles must have electric propulsion.
Chair, Electric Mobility Canada
Sure.
In every analysis and evaluation that has taken place to date internationally to try to evaluate the number of vehicle kilometres travelled with AVs, the estimates have ranged anywhere from a 50% to a 100% increase in the number of kilometres travelled. That means that if these kilometres continue to be travelled with internal combustion engines, given the importance of the transportation sector in generating greenhouse gas emissions, we're going to be in a very difficult situation, as a country or even internationally, for meeting many of our climate change mitigation objectives if we do not think about this in advance and start to put rules in place.
For example, there are municipalities and countries around the world that are already saying that in 2030 or 2035, depending on the jurisdiction, there will be no more internal combustion engine vehicles. What I'm suggesting is that as we prepare for a future of AVs, given what we already know in terms of the number of vehicle kilometres travelled, we should already be starting to think about introducing electric drives in those vehicles.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
I gave you a heads-up on what I was going to ask, so I hope you've had a chance to think about it.
Nobody can dispute than an electric vehicle travelling down the road is probably as close to zero emissions as we can get, but a lot depends on where that electricity comes from to charge that vehicle. If we're in the Prairies and we're charging vehicles by burning coal to generate the electricity for them, we're not much farther ahead.
Therefore there are two questions, I guess. What would you anticipate to be the additional demand in gigawatts for our electrical system to handle a really large fleet of electric vehicles? Second, what are provincial and federal governments going to have to do to come up with a better way of generating that electricity?
Chair, Electric Mobility Canada
It is very different from one region of the country to another. In a province like Quebec, for example, the provincial utility has already done the analysis and feels that with over one million electric vehicles on provincial roads, the utility can handle them without any changes whatsoever to the grid. As far as the the local distribution companies in Ontario are concerned or as far as BC Hydro is concerned, we're hearing a lot of the same rhetoric.
In terms of your statement that if we're burning coal we're not further ahead, there is no grid in this country that is 100% coal, where coal generates all of the electricity, so we have an opportunity, even if it's not all renewables, in a province like Ontario where there's a lot of nuclear, or in a province like Manitoba, or in provinces like B.C. or Quebec where we have a lot of renewables—in fact, almost all renewables—to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and—
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
What about in Alberta, Saskatchewan, or Newfoundland and Labrador?
Chair, Electric Mobility Canada
Alberta has already introduced regulations and plans to do away with all of its coal-burning facilities.
Chair, Electric Mobility Canada
Well, renewables.... The price of solar is coming down in such an important way.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Sun Country Highway Ltd.
Alberta has provided some contracts for renewable energy, and for all intents and purposes, they are some of the lowest rates ever, in the range of 4¢ per kilowatt hour. You can't build coal plants for that, so that's definitely possible.
To go back to what I said earlier, we've electrified virtually every highway in Canada with the charging network that's actually free to use. Just a week ago we launched the first 100% solar-powered car share in Canada. This means that 100% of this car is powered with 100% solar power, and there are no tailpipe emissions in this car. If solar-powered car-sharing is possible today, autonomous vehicles are a very simple transition for us to hit. Having 100% zero-emission transportation in Canada is very easy to achieve.
Most metro bus fleets in Canada are subsidized to the tune of 60% or greater. If you move those metro fleets to 100% electric vehicles, you can pretty much cash-flow all of those metro fleets across the nation. What's possible with electric is pretty substantial.
That's today. Those vehicles are out there today.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
Yes, I have a question.
A number of witnesses have talked about the importance of protecting their personal data. Mr. Nantais, you also talked about this in the beginning of your presentation. I actually just came back from an international commission where this issue was on the agenda. Everyone agrees on how much of a priority this is, but few witnesses have come forth with specific proposals.
All of us have already checked the “I accept” box on documents that we would not have been able to understand even if we had taken the time to read them. Shouldn't requiring that contracts be written in a way that people can understand be the first step to take?
My question is for the both of you, Mr. Nantais and Ms. Kargas.
President, Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association
Certainly, I think that contracts such as that should be in lay language and should be understandable. Second, our companies must comply with all applicable laws. Whether it's PIPEDA or CASL, that's what we must comply with. That's what we do, and that's what we're going to do in the future as and when the legislation changes, if it does.
Right now in Canada, for instance, the privacy legislation is actually more stringent than in the United States. Canada's privacy legislation may actually impede some of the technologies that we're talking about here in terms of the timing of their introduction.
We hold up personal privacy information as of the utmost importance, and like cybersecurity, privacy is also built into the vehicle from the ground up at every stage of development and every stage of design. That's something we will not withdraw from. That's of paramount importance.
Chair, Electric Mobility Canada
I would strongly recommend that you study what the government of Finland has done for protecting data, and how data will be used in the context of autonomous vehicles.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Are there any other pressing questions for the minute and a half that we have left?
Go ahead, Mr. Sikand.
Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Kent, you mentioned something that I'd like your comment on. You said that infrastructure isn't actually a bar to electric vehicles, but that's often what we hear. Could you just explain that a bit?
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Sun Country Highway Ltd.
Sure. It was one of the main issues, obviously, before we electrified the longest highway in the world and globally shattered the myths about electric vehicles.
Charging stations are very inexpensive to apply to your place of business or your home. Our model was to have businesses leverage charging stations and the expense of powering vehicles to attract people to their place of business, their hotel, or their restaurant. If you're going to spend a dollar to attract an electric vehicle to your hotel and then the person spends $200 there, it's a very inexpensive way to attract people to your place of business.
With regard to the access to electric vehicles in Canada, there's more supply than demand, but it's difficult for the automakers to make this available.
I would say that at the federal level—
Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
I'm just going to jump in there quickly, because according to one study, the market share that electric vehicles have is 0.4% in Canada and 0.7% in the U.S., but 23.3% in Norway.
Go ahead.