Transport Committee on March 26th, 2018

[The Chair (Hon. Judy A. Sgro (Humber River—Black Creek, Lib.)), Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I call to order meeting number 96 of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are studying automated and connected vehicles in Canada.

The witnesses we have on this first panel are David Ticoll, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Innovation Policy Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. From the Canadian Automobile Association, we have Ian Jack, Managing Director of cCmmunications and Government Relations, and from the the Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence, we have Barrie Kirk, Executive Director.

Mr. Ticoll, you may go first. We have to warn you that there may be a vote coming up shortly, so we may have to suspend and go to the House and then come back.

The floor is yours for five minutes, please.

[David Ticoll, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Innovation Policy Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair and committee, for this opportunity to testify in support of your study on the issues related to automated and connected vehicles in Canada.

As you may know, I also had the honour, along with my co-witnesses, of testifying on this topic at the Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communications last spring. The Senate committee report is excellent. Please consider my remarks to be a build on that report.

I plan to focus on some major policy issues, but first I'll address the recent fatality of a pedestrian hit by a self-driving vehicle in Arizona. The video record suggests the collision was due to a technology systems failure, but the technologies involved are straightforward and in wide use. Why this happened is a mystery. There are probably big implications for regulatory policy, but automated vehicle technology will continue to advance.

I'll get into the main topic by respectfully suggesting that we broaden the conversation. The policy issues related to automated vehicles and connected vehicles—AVs and CVs, what I call intelligent mobility—are best addressed in combination with municipal planning and the smart city agenda. This is because intelligent mobility applications will be the defining networks of future cities, just as cars with human drivers shaped our cities and towns over the past 100 years. Smart cities and intelligent mobility bring many promises, such as safety, environmental benefits, congestion management, accessibility, convenience, and cost savings, among others.

There are also risks and challenges. For example, we know that ride-sharing in major U.S. cities has already increased congestion and reduced public transit use. The question is what Canada is doing to maximize the upside and minimize or mitigate the downside risks.

I'm going to focus on five topics: governance, data, infrastructure, mobility sector development, and social policy.

First, on governance, the Senate called for a joint Transport Canada-ISED policy unit for this topic. I suggest that as is happening elsewhere, this be broadened to an all-of-government approach. This is because the mobility and urbanism revolutions will have profound and disruptive impacts on just about every government policy and program area.

I further suggest the formation of a standing federal-provincial-territorial and municipal smart city intelligent mobility forum. This national SCIM forum, if you like, should be mandated to ensure that we realize the vision of a smart Canada that Canadians want.

Why do we need a new national forum? Well, consider my second topic, which is really at the heart of the issue: data policy. The Senate report rightly pays a lot of attention to this issue. There is a good chance that a handful of global mobility companies will dominate our streets, capture the data, and assert control over its use. The risks associated with this scenario are all over today's headlines. The Senate offers more recommendations on data policy than on any other topic, including cybersecurity, road safety, and of course privacy. The Senate also importantly identifies the need to open digital mobility data and algorithms so Canadian-based companies can participate and compete in this market.

The Senate's data policy framework deserves expansion. Governments need mobility and municipal data to manage traffic and inform infrastructure investments. The data is essential to mobility as a service concept that lets consumers move easily from bikes to buses to cars. It's necessary for transparent reporting of incidents, collisions, emissions, fuel efficiency, and road use and is necessary for assuring compliance with accessibility, pricing, and algorithmic neutrality policies.

More fundamentally, we should treat data rights as human rights. Individuals and communities should control the data derived from their essential activities, such as moving around and using public services. Mobility and city life is not the same as Facebook, which is an optional human choice.

My third topic is infrastructure. Two things are clear. First, some key current infrastructure plans fail the futureproofing test. Second, models of smart people-centric and transit-centric intelligent mobility design are now becoming clearer than they were even a year or two ago. The current approach of letting local decision-makers set the priorities has too often led to decisions with built-in obsolescence. We need to turn this around.

Fourth is innovation and growth of intelligent mobility and smart city sectors. I'm very active in this area. We have 175 digital mobility companies in Ontario. I'm on the advisory committee for the Automated Vehicle Innovation Network. There is a lot of good stuff happening here.

I'm going to skip through this because I'm running out of time, but I would say that the government needs to do a lot of work around skills development in this area. We need to proactively promote gender and diversity in these careers, and governments need to prioritize investments in intelligent mobility-friendly infrastructure and open up the data to support the sector.

Last, I will highlight the social policy implications. By my calculation, intelligent mobility will generate downside risks for jobs in sectors that employ 1.3 million Canadians. Most of these, such as insurance agents, car dealers, and carbon sector workers, aren't even professional drivers. On the other hand, we can achieve wonderful gains for the environment, for all kinds of disadvantaged groups, and for transportation equity if we get our policies and programs right. Once again, coordination can only help.

I'll close by saying that I'll be pleased to work with the committee and committee members in helping develop your work in this area. I'm also an adviser to the Information Technology Association of Canada, and we both have a great interest in data policy in particular, and in many dimensions, one of which is around economic development for Canada and Canadian competitiveness.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

We'll move on to Mr. Jack for five minutes.

[Ian Jack, Managing Director, Communications and Government Relations, Canadian Automobile Association]

Thank you very much, Chair and committee members. Thank you for your interest in the subject, which is a very important one to over six million CAA members across the country. Our main issue is on the non-profit public affairs side of our operation, including road safety, the environment, mobility, infrastructure, consumer protection, and the future of the automobile, which is what brings us here today, among other things.

First of all, it's important to know that connected vehicles are already on our roads, and that their presence is growing every year in Canada. For example, most new vehicles offer a GPS connection via an internal antenna. Moreover, various safety features, such as lane support systems and automatic parking assist systems, allow on-board computers to know what's going on outside, and take control of the vehicle, even if it is for just a few seconds.

Most of us are familiar with the image of the Google car, and we think of that when we think of autonomous vehicles. It looks like a different species. The reality is more likely to be evolutionary, however, than revolutionary. Slowly features are being added that, taken together, are leading down the path to full autonomy.

To us, the development of the technology needed for fully autonomous vehicles is inevitable. There are at least three big questions outstanding, however.

The first is how quickly the environment outside the vehicle will be able to evolve to accommodate the technology. All levels of government will have to adapt regulations for this new world and, to some extent, change the way they spend on infrastructure. One quick example is insurance legislation, which universally speaks of persons. Where will liability rest in this new world? It’s quite possible to arrive at an answer, but the topic will have to be debated and legislation created.

The second concern, which is related to the first, is how soon autonomous vehicles will become commonplace on our roads. Did you know that all the vehicles in use today could be completely different in 20 years? It's impossible to be sure of it, but we believe that autonomous vehicles will be dominating the market between 2025 or 2040. All the more reason to start preparing as soon as possible.

There is expert consensus, however, on the fact that AVs will kill fewer people than human drivers and that AVs should extend personal mobility to many, such as the elderly, who cannot drive today. For these reasons, CAA supports the responsible development of autonomous vehicle technologies.

The third major concern we have at the Canadian Automobile Association is the control over the huge amounts of personal data that will be collected by connected and autonomous vehicles about the drivers.

Vehicles are becoming smart phones on wheels. It's almost trite to say so today. Your vehicle will soon, if it doesn’t already, know as much or more about your movements, likes, and dislikes as anyone in your life, even your spouse, unless you drive everywhere with them. CAA has long held that vehicle owners should be informed about what data is being collected and be able, within reasonable limits, to choose with whom they share it. It must not be a take-it-or-leave-it approach that forces the owner to abandon all rights to privacy in order to enjoy the benefits of in-car technology.

This is not a theoretical concern. In an early 2017 CAA national opinion poll, 49% of Canadians said that they were not aware of the range of data being collected by their vehicle today. When it comes to sharing of that vehicle data, nearly 90% of Canadians agreed that the consumer should decide who gets access to their vehicle data. Further, in a late 2017 national poll, 77% of Canadians said they were not aware that they had consented to the collection and use of their private data when they purchased their vehicle.

Illustrating that the issue of privacy of data in connected vehicles exists today, not as a theoretical construct for 10 years from now, one in three Canadians polled who have rented a car or used a car-sharing vehicle have found a previous user’s personal information still in the vehicle’s system.

According to this same survey, 81% of Canadians believe that clear rules must be applied to protect the personal data collected by these vehicles.

CAA participated in the Senate’s recent AV study, and we welcomed the final report, which was released in January 2018. The findings echoed CAA's position on this file, recommending that “Canadians should have control over their personal information.” The report went on to recommend that “Transport Canada bring together relevant stakeholders—governments, automakers, and consumers—to develop a connected car framework, with privacy protection as one of its key drivers.”

These discussions have not been happening to date. We hope this committee will agree that these issues need to be addressed and endorse this recommendation.

In conclusion, even if some challenges must be addressed, it is obvious that connected and autonomous vehicles will provide many benefits over the years. However, now is the time to join the discussion, strategically speaking, so that governments can contribute to the responsible development of these innovative technologies.

CAA looks forward to continuing to represent the consumer interest on this important topic. We thank you for your invitation to speak to you today.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Go ahead, Mr. Kirk, for five minutes, please.

[Barrie Kirk, Executive Director, Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, and thank you all for the opportunity to testify.

I am going to be frank and honest in my comments this afternoon, but I will be polite.

In June 2014 the federal government asked the Honourable David Emerson to review the Canada Transportation Act. CAVCOE contributed to that review.

The Emerson report was published in December 2015, with research on AVs. Also in December 2015, CAVCOE published its white paper on what we felt the federal government should do. There were 30 AV-related recommendations. The vast majority of those are still waiting to be implemented.

In 2016 Transport Canada conducted extensive consultations with Canadians as a follow-up to the Emerson report. Also in 2016 the Library of Parliament researched AVs and CVs. Again we contributed to that work, and the report was published in September 2016.

In 2017, as you know, the senate committee conducted research and held hearings. Again we contributed, and the report was published two months ago.

It is now March 2018, and you are holding these hearings. In parallel with all of this, Transport Canada staff have been discussing AVs with other groups within Transport Canada. Transport Canada has been holding discussions with ISED. The federal government has been discussing AVs and CVs with the provinces and the territories, and Transport Canada has been discussing them with the U.S. In total there have been three and a half years of hearings, research, consultations, and reports.

As Yes, Minister's Sir Humphrey Appleby might have said, “Everybody has been terribly busy holding meetings and consultations and discussing this topic.” My first message to you this afternoon is “Enough, already.” It's time to move beyond research, consultations, and reports and to put some action items in place.

There was an excellent op-ed piece in The Globe and Mail last year by Kevin Lynch, the vice-chair of the Bank of Montreal and the former Clerk to the Privy Council and secretary to the cabinet. The op-ed was entitled “How disruptive technologies are eroding our trust in government”. Mr. Lynch wrote, “There is the ever-increasing pace of technical change versus the pace of policymaking....”

I have a second message to the committee this afternoon, and I've picked one key recommendation. I propose that the federal government create the Canadian automated vehicles institute, CAVI, modelled on the U.K. government's centre for connected and autonomous vehicles, CCAV. I propose that the Canadian AV institute be a joint policy unit of Transport Canada and the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. It would be a focal point for those in government, industry, academia, and internationally. It would help Canada to move to the forefront not only of the development but also the deployment of autonomous vehicles. The website for the U.K.'s CCAV includes more detailed objectives that can be a template for the Canadian version.

According to the consulting company KPMG, the Netherlands, believe it or not, are the world leaders in readiness for AVs, with the Dutch AV Institute, or DAVI. The Australians have the Australian Driverless Vehicle Institute, ADVI, and CAVCOE has a formal partnership with them. In the same KPMG report, there is a table showing the AV readiness of 20 countries. Canada is number seven.

My advice to the Senate committee looking into AVs included the recommendation for a Canadian AV institute. My advice became recommendation number one in the Senate report.

In summary, I believe it's time for the federal government to transition from studies, reports, and consultations and to start to better prepare Canada for the AV era.

I propose that action item number one be the formation of a Canadian automated vehicles institute.

Thank you again for this opportunity to let off some steam on what I believe.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Kirk.

We'll move on to Mr. Chong for six minutes.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. With your permission I'd like to split my time with Mr. Liepert.

I have a very simple question for all three of you, but to Mr. Ticoll and Mr. Kirk in particular. We're not the government, so we can't enact regulations. We are interested in this, though, as a legislative committee, and we are studying it because we think it's important.

In light of the fact that the Senate has done this study and that there have been numerous other studies, what should this committee focus on to fill the gaps that have not yet been studied, and what should be the focus of this particular committee report?

[David Ticoll]

First of all I want to say that I agree with Barrie that the first step is to form this joint Transport Canada-ISED thing. We can then build on that to the national initiative that I'm talking about, but it should be led by that. This issue of governance and how this phenomenon is going to be driven in this country is a critical issue, and I would recommend that your very first priority be to find a way to help government get off the dime on that.

The second issue is the data issue. I believe one of the reasons the government has been so slow to act is that the data issue is a confounding issue: we don't have the necessary mandates, tools, or legislative frameworks. I agree with you that privacy is a big issue, but it's not the only issue. There are many other issues: cybersecurity, access to data for innovation, mobility within cities, how cities manage their environments, and so on. We don't have the skills within government to develop and implement policy along these lines. It extends beyond cars and mobility into just about every other area. These are two fundamental challenges that I believe would be critical to move the ball forward.

Let me make one last comment: there are many other factors at work here. There is all kinds of housekeeping-type stuff, the regulatory things that need to be done to realize this phenomenon. That's a whole other area, and I believe the committee in this respect needs to find a way to ensure that the government administration moves a bit more quickly on those fronts. Those should be very easy to do relative to these complex issues that I've just identified.

[Barrie Kirk]

It's a very good question, and I agree with my colleague David Ticoll here.

As I said in my testimony, the place to start—and we're both agreed—is the Canadian AV institute. As David said, there's a long list of other things that government should be doing, and for that I refer you back to the white paper we did over three years ago, with 30 recommendations for the federal government. The Senate report has 16 recommendations—15 others—and part of the issue in all of this is what Kevin Lynch wrote about. It's very challenging for government to deal with very disruptive technologies. The past is no guide to the future, and that makes it really challenging. It's important, in any disruptive technology, to get ahead of the curve.

We've been doing some work for the City of Toronto, and they understand that you don't wait for the technology to arrive and then develop the regulatory framework. You try to get ahead of the curve, and that's one of the very important things that I agree with Kevin Lynch on—to get ahead of the curve from the policy framework perspective.

[Ian Jack]

May I just add very quickly and in support of something one of my colleagues here at the table said? Communicating a sense of urgency to government on this file is very important. One of the things that's delayed it is that government likes to fight fires, and you could look at this file and say this is an issue for 2025 or 2030, so why would we get involved today?

As I alluded to in my remarks and as my colleagues are saying, there's an awful lot of work to be done that's going to take years to get through. We're not opposed to the machinery proposal that's been put forward here, but I would point out that an awful lot of this jurisdiction, traditionally and under our Constitution, is provincial as well. Part of the long tail that it'll take to get this right is figuring out ways for the federal government and the provinces to work in ways they haven't had to before. The federal spectrum people at ISED have not had to think about provincial road regulations before, for instance.

This is all going to have to come together in a new way, so there is a sense of urgency that we really shouldn't put this on the back burner and think we can do that for five or 10 years. We can't.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Liepert, I'm sorry, but you may have just a short question.

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

It can be short, because I happen to agree with all three panellists. Do you not think, however, that generally when things work well, government just gets out of the way? With technology, it seems as though government is always trying to catch up anyway.

I'm sitting here wondering what the creation of the institute is going to do that is going to necessarily speed this along. Sometimes it's better just for government to get out of the way, let technology do what technology has been doing well for over the last several dozen years anyway, and then if there are issues that government has to deal with, you deal with it.

The reality of it is that if you want government in this, government thinks they can solve everybody's problem that really doesn't exist. Maybe I'm asking you to be careful what you ask for.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We're well over the time limit.

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

Well, I'm going to pass on my next question, Judy...or Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Okay, call me Judy.

In response to some of our other colleagues, maybe you can try to weave an answer to Mr. Liepert's question.

Mr. Fraser is next.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair; and thank you to our witnesses for being here.

I heard on at least two occasions during the testimony you gave that to open things, in fact, we might not have the skills in place today to deal with the need that the emerging technology presents. Mr. Ticoll, you specifically discussed it in the context of the need to be there as innovations happen around the world in terms of skills development.

As a quick example, a young woman approached my office because she has been doing research, at about age 13, on automatic vehicles and came with a printed presentation she had at her science fair on the issue. Her name is Hayley. She is well versed in the issues on automatic vehicles, and I would suggest that she knows more about them than the vast majority of parliamentarians. When she was asking me how to stay engaged with this, my face was blank. I didn't know where to tell her to go.

How do we make sure there are opportunities for people such as Hayley to stay engaged with this developing industry and take advantage of the talent that exists so we are ahead of the curve, so to speak, in Mr. Kirk's turn of phrase?

Maybe Mr. Ticoll could respond first, and then Mr. Kirk, if he'd like to follow.

[David Ticoll]

As I mentioned, I'm on the advisory committee to the Automated Vehicle Innovation Network for Ontario. I was at a meeting just last week and I was having a conversation with one of the folks from the Ontario government about what is attracting these 175 companies to invest in Ontario. He said the number one reason is talent, the number two reason is talent, and the number three reason is talent.

That means we're already off to a good start because we're attracting a massive amount of investment from pretty much a standing start two or three years ago.

Where I think we need to take this now—and I have some experience in this area—is to start professionalizing this field. We need to start structuring it around clear career definitions. We need to start building post-secondary programs devoted to both smart cities and autonomous vehicles. That's how you address the skills agenda—and if I may, to respond to the previous question, that's one example of how government can play a role.

I would just say on that front that my personal view is that because we're now dealing with human lives and these valuable human assets such as data, again, look at the headlines. Government has let some organizations do what they like with our data, and that seems to be creating a few problems that we need to deal with societally.

Unfortunately, we do have to. There is a good case for a role for government in these matters, among others.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Kirk, you had some feedback on this issue as well.

[Barrie Kirk]

Indeed, yes. Thank you for the question.

First of all, I agree with my colleague here. The big issue for government is that there are three different sectors of the issue, which makes it more complicated. There's the technology, the innovation and research and development. That's moving ahead pretty well at the moment.

Second, there is the regulatory framework. I don't like unnecessary government intervention, but as David has mentioned, there are issues about privacy and issues about the regulatory framework. I know that General Motors has in fact requested of the U.S. government certain changes to vehicle safety regulations, which is one of the ways that government must be involved. GM has announced that they will start mass-producing driverless vehicles in 2019, next year, and they've requested a number of variances to the safety regulations, not to make cars less safe but to be realistic. Regulations in Canada and the U.S. at the moment require that there be an airbag tucked inside the steering wheel. If there's no steering wheel, that makes no sense. What GM is proposing is to treat both front seats in a car the same way, the same way that a passenger seat, at the moment, is controlled.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Certainly.

If I can interject, there's another topic I want to cover, and I'm conscious of the time I have.

On a number of occasions I heard testimony about the need to change the way we fund infrastructure and move away from the model whereby we let local decision-makers—I assume that meant municipalities—dictate the priorities, in collaboration with the provinces. What model can we look to and how do we avoid the federal government playing SimCity and trying to build little things in communities that they may not need? How do we make sure we're instead preparing for efficient transit within cities and between cities in the future?

[Barrie Kirk]

I'll talk first, if I may. One of the things I've been saying for about three years is it's very important that any application for funding for new infrastructure, for transportation or transit, include an evaluation of the impact of autonomous vehicles.

Anthony Foxx, who was the transportation secretary in the Obama administration, wrote an article, which was published in a magazine, that said full deployment of autonomous and connected vehicles can in fact increase the traffic-carrying capacity by a factor of five, which is huge. With all due respect to former secretary Foxx, I don't believe him, but if we could increase the traffic-carrying capacity even by a factor of two, that's huge. For the long term, I wonder how much of all this new infrastructure we really need. Some of it is justified. Some of it may not be. I've been recommending that all applications for financing for infrastructure carry that evaluation of the impact of AVs.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Madam Chair, do I have any time remaining?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

You have 15 seconds, so you don't have any time.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

In the 15 seconds, I think I'll say thank you.