Evidence of meeting #97 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 road.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
The first set of witnesses we had expressed concern that it has been three and a half years since the Emerson report and that there have been subsequent reports done, including the one by the Senate. Their presentation was about being here again studying it again when it's time for government to move on this issue.
I'm also wondering about this. We've heard a lot about infrastructure, and it seems to me that's one area where government may be able to be moving to accommodate this eventuality, because infrastructure planning should be done for a number of years down the road.
I'd just like to get a sense of whether you feel government is moving fast enough on its infrastructure investments in the right areas to be accommodating this maybe not even 10 years from now. I'd like a sort of general comment on that.
5:10 p.m.
Professor, Laboratory on Intelligent Vehicles, Université de Sherbrooke, As an Individual
Certainly, the federal government and the different levels of government could provide some incentives in order to encourage municipalities, for example, to instrument some critical locations. For example, instrumentations and communications capability could be put into critical intersections in order to help improve safety in those regions.
It would be unrealistic to say that we have to instrument and make more intelligent all of the infrastructure that we have. It's impossible. We don't even have the money to fill in our potholes, so I don't see how we could spend that much money on instrumentation.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
Well, that's sort of my point. Are we spending this infrastructure money today thinking about 10 to 15 years down the road? My guess would be that we're investing infrastructure dollars today for projects that are no different from the projects we were investing in 10 to 20 years ago.
I'm not making a partisan thing here; I am saying government in general. Are there some things that government should have maybe been doing two to three years ago—and if not then, at least today and tomorrow—to be ready for this when it comes? It's around the corner.
5:15 p.m.
Senior Vice-President, QNX Software Systems Limited
It's an interesting question, because we know from working with the car makers on putting V2X systems into the cars today that they don't bother doing it because they can't make money with it—
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
I'm going to ask Mr. Wall to stop for one second.
The bells have rung. Do I have unanimous consent to complete the meeting?
5:15 p.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
5:15 p.m.
Senior Vice-President, QNX Software Systems Limited
Can I carry on? Okay.
It's almost a chicken-and-egg thing. A car maker can't sell this feature because there is no infrastructure. If there were infrastructure, the car maker could sell that feature, whereby you would have accident avoidance at a very congested intersection, for instance.
Exactly as was mentioned here, you don't have to do all the infrastructure, but certainly there are places where it would make sense.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
There was other testimony that said testing is going on in Arizona today because it has the perfect conditions for testing. We have anything but perfect conditions, so how do you move from there to here, and then how does it work 10 to 15 years from now on my country road? When I pull out of the driveway, sometimes I don't know where the ditch is. Is that a whole other issue?
5:15 p.m.
Head, Product Management, QNX Software Systems Limited
Yes, it is.
That's one of the things we're testing. If you think about a human on a country road where there are no markers, how do we judge where we are if we're in the middle of a snowstorm? We're probably looking at tree lines, hydro poles, ditches, etc. We have to teach the machines, the computers in the car, to think a bit like we do, and as we were talking about earlier, act in a safer fashion.
These are basic problems. If you look at the DMV in California and the number of disengagements in autonomous cars, guess what? Most of them have to do simply with rain. When it starts to rain, the sensors start to fail.
We've learned here, for instance, in Ottawa, because we have interesting weather at times—which is great for testing, by the way—that LIDAR is not very good in the snow or the rain or when there's slush on your bumper, whereas radar is. We've learned that yellow lines on the road are much better than white lines. Just by what I'm sharing here, you can see this is the kind of learning and testing that we're doing.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
Should the government be thinking about those little things in infrastructure investments—painting yellow lines instead of white lines?
5:15 p.m.
Head, Product Management, QNX Software Systems Limited
As a very simple example, I can share with you what our findings are, but if you were to talk to engineers doing research, they'll tell you they can recognize yellow lines much better than white lines, especially when it's snowing.
It's a bit of a chicken and egg. There are dedicated short-range communications systems, DSRC systems, in cars today that can talk wirelessly, but they have no one to talk to except for the cars among themselves, and automakers can't monetize it because there's no infrastructure, so there's no value necessarily to the consumer. That's just a reflection of where we're at today.
If intersections had this capability, then all of a sudden you could have a safety feature in the vehicles that would benefit the consumer.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
I'm glad I'm 68 years old, Chair, and I don't need to deal with this stuff.
5:15 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
We need to stop because we have to go in camera for an issue on our agenda today.
To our witnesses, thank you very much. Who knows? We may have to have you back, because clearly the committee has lots more questions.
If you could just exit the room as quickly as possible, it would be appreciated.
[Proceedings continue in camera]