Transport Committee on May 6th, 2021

[The Clerk]

I guess the impact would be, if the committee wants to begin looking at draft reports on Tuesday, we would simply bump it back and move the first meeting that we were thinking of for Ukraine Flight 752 into June, and everything else would pretty much stay the same. We would just focus on reports, except for next week's visit with the ministers.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Yes, I'm fine with moving the first meeting of the study.

I should just add, Clerk, the motion also states that the Twin Otter study remains as well, not just Flight 752, just to clarify for all committee members.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

That's correct.

Are there any further questions or comments from members of the committee as per the motion?

With none, Mr. Clerk, I'll ask you to call the vote, please.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 11; nays 0)

Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Thank you, members.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, colleagues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Ms. Kusie.

We're now going to go back to that second round of questions. We have the Liberals, with Mr. Rogers.

Mr. Rogers, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thank you, Chair, and welcome to all of our guests today.

I especially want to highlight Mayor Parsons from the beautiful, scenic city of Corner Brook on the west coast. I'm happy to hear that you're getting great support from your MP, our colleagueGudie Hutchings.

Mayor Parsons, I just have a couple of questions. First of all, you talked about the impact of the infrastructure programs and the funding you get for the city of Corner Brook. I guess the alternative to that is what the impact would be on small and medium-sized cities like yours, and communities in Newfoundland and Labrador, without further future infrastructure investments from the federal government.

[Jim Parsons]

As you know well, Mr. Rogers, the municipalities here are facing a difficult situation when it comes to the state of infrastructure. Our city has been in this area for about a hundred years and incorporated as a city for only 60 years, but we have a great deal of infrastructure needs when it comes to upgrades and maintenance.

Without substantial support, it is almost impossible to keep ahead of it. We undergo a pretty rigorous asset management program, but there is never enough infrastructure funding to go around. It is imperative, really, that we continue a steady, predictable stream of infrastructure funding.

As I mentioned in my testimony, the gas tax model has worked really well for us. We don't have to wait. We can move ahead. It offers us a great deal of flexibility to make decisions for ourselves and really prioritize, as opposed to project-based funding, which is more difficult to predict.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Mayor Parsons, I was going to ask you about the gas tax funding and about the stability that it brings to you and the flexibility and so on.

Do you have any other suggestions or recommendations to the federal government in terms of the gas tax fund, how it's currently deployed and the flexibility it provides?

[Jim Parsons]

I think there are sort of two sides to our needs.

Any municipality requires ongoing maintenance and upgrades to infrastructure, so predictability is super important. If we can maintain and grow that aspect of it while at the same time providing a clear path for large infrastructure projects—these once every 20 year-type projects—that are the priority of our federal and provincial governments....

I think providing more predictable, steady funding would be key and would allow us to do a lot better asset management for our municipalities.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Of course, the fact that we're doubling that gas tax fund for this year is tremendous news for you and other mayors across Newfoundland and Labrador and across the country.

I have one final question for Mr. Stewart with regard to the insurance programs.

Is paying greater attention to risk management by municipalities the way to prevent future escalating premiums for municipalities and, I guess, for all around the sector?

[Craig Stewart]

Thank you for the question.

Canada is becoming a riskier and riskier place for insurers to do business. If you take a look at the losses that insurers have paid over the last decade on the property side, there are some areas of the country where insurers are actually losing money. Focusing on risk reduction at the municipal level is a way to make sure that constituents and businesses pay a reasonable amount of insurance instead of the increases that we've been seeing lately.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

For our good friend from Sept-Îles, how do you see the value of the infrastructure funding in completing work in your particular region?

[Réjean Porlier]

Thank you for your question.

I'm thinking in particular of the recreational and sports infrastructure financial assistance program, PAFIRS. During the last campaign, needs were in the order of $1.4 billion and and the fund had only $282 million. The fund includes money from both the provincial and federal governments. As you can imagine, the gap is a big one.

We currently have to renovate an arena that's coming to the end of its useful life, and we still aren't in a position to do it.

I want to point out, for those who don't know it, that Sept-Îles is a port city. We have the largest mineral-handling port in North America. When the mining companies arrived, they built the ski resort, the golf club, the curling club and so on, but that's not the case today. So cities are finding it very hard to keep up with the pace of replacing all that infrastructure. The needs are very great.

We're naturally grateful for the efforts that have recently been made, such as those concerning the gasoline tax. However, a lot more needs must be met.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

We're now going to move on to the Bloc.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, you have two and a half minutes.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My next question concerns a matter that may previously have been addressed in committee, though without necessarily being subject to questions.

Mr. Porlier, in rural municipalities such as those on the North Shore, where there are no roads, we often see that maintenance of certain types of infrastructure, such as wharves and in some instances airports, is deficient and causing problems, even for regular supply purposes.

From the moment a road is built, the federal government often uses it as a pretext to stop maintaining, or at least funding, those wharves. However, the wharves represent the livelihood of the people who live there because they affect fishermen, who can't go and fish in the forest.

Do you think that stopping maintenance on your infrastructure, just letting it go, on the pretext that you no longer need it since you have a road constitutes bad practice on the government's part?

[Réjean Porlier]

It's actually even tougher when we're told that we'll be getting a road and, consequently, that there will be no investment in other infrastructure, but the road doesn't come quickly.

However, you're right about the fishing. There's fishing all along the coast. Earlier I said that we have 1,200 kilometers of coastline back home. When you need to travel fast, you take a plane, and that'll be the case for a long time to come. So we have to keep providing a minimum level of maintenance on our infrastructure, and that remains a problem. We can't say we'll focus on only one aspect.

It all goes back to the question of vitality, of dynamic use of the territory. There's a real difference between using a territory in a dynamic manner and using it, as I often see, in a resilient manner. We tend to think that people will cope, that they're used to investment funding not always coming in. However, all those people are exhausted. They can't wait to cut the ribbon.

I'll be the first to jump into my car and go visit Newfoundland, and many people are eager to do the same.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you.

I'd like you to go back to aviation, even though it's not directly related to infrastructure. The existing federal program subsidizes transportation only where there are no roads.

Is this kind of program viable in a place that's located thousands of kilometers from the major centres?

[Réjean Porlier]

We're fortunate to have the road in Sept-Îles, but I should point out that we have the third busiest airport in Quebec. It's a regional hub, a place where passengers arrive from the north, the Far North, Wabush and all the communities east of the city. So our infrastructure has to be maintained and kept up to date. It's about development; not just economics, but socioeconomics. It's about the communities.

Actually, the economic component will often overwhelm everything else, but it's very important for the people who inhabit this region.

What I'd like, and what I've been requesting for a long time, is that we sit down with representatives of the two orders of government so we can come up with a strategy together and be able to say that we now have the tools we should use to ensure a dynamic use of the territory.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

We'll move to Mr. Bachrach of the NDP.

You have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Stewart, I found your presentation at the beginning very interesting. I understand that you welcomed the government's intention to conduct a national infrastructure assessment. Can you share with the committee what you feel the priorities of such an assessment should be? What areas of infrastructure should the assessment focus on?

[Craig Stewart]

In context, in our view it's important to take a step back and conduct an assessment to figure out where the greater needs are across the country. As I said in the presentation, I'd like to stress, though, that it should be coordinated with two other activities in government. One is the development of a national adaptation strategy. Two, it should be coordinated with the work done by Public Safety Canada, Finance Canada and Natural Resources Canada on a national risk profile. We need to get an understanding of who is most vulnerable to climate risk and we should be reducing their risk accordingly. Therefore, only a national infrastructure assessment that links in to these other two studies will give us the sort of eagle-eyed view of the whole country that we need.

Implicit in my answer is that we believe climate resilience is, of course, the number one issue. Trade corridors are important, of course, and there's enormous demand for broadband in rural and remote communities. We get that. But as insurers, we also believe that due attention needs to be paid to climate risk in this country. Frankly, we have done very, very little collectively to address the issue of our growing climate risk. The amounts that are being allocated in infrastructure programming are too small to meet what the needs are of municipalities across the country.

In short, we believe climate resilience should also be prioritized in programming from Infrastructure Canada. The infrastructure assessment will be key to eliminating that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Bachrach, a quick question.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Oh, a quick question....

Well, I guess it's daunting to hear the magnitude of the climate adaptation challenge. We're not investing nearly enough in climate mitigation. I think the amount we're investing in adaptation is even less. This isn't an easy question to answer in two seconds, but I'm wondering how we make sure that both of these two tranches related to climate are moving forward adequately. Right now, it feels like neither is.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

That's a key question.

[Craig Stewart]

In our view, private sector capital is important on both sides of the equation—bringing private sector capital into Canada and doing the necessary work to attract it. As I mentioned, there are efforts on price resilience under way globally. Canada should be tying into those efforts and figuring out how we attract that capital to Canada. It can't be just governments that are footing the whole bill.