Transport Committee on Feb. 13th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Ms. Koutrakis, the floor is yours.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you very much, and thank you, Mr. Rogers, for being so generous with your time. I really appreciate being able to ask a question.

My question is for Mr. Barrieau, and I'm putting on my hat as PS to the Minister of Tourism and Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Quebec regions. I'm going to share two of my thoughts with you, and I'd be very interested to hear what your thoughts are on my beliefs.

I believe this project would essentially create a more competitive supermetropolis out of four separate metro areas—Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, perhaps Calgary and Edmonton and the smaller cities in between—by making travel for work, education, business, tourism, or visiting family and friends much more efficient than anything we have today.

I also believe that high-frequency rail is aligned with the government's direction to double tourism's contribution to our economy in a decade and that, once HFR is implemented, tourism will be boosted further, as domestic and international visitors will be able to seamlessly travel between those six great Canadian cities, as well as Banff and smaller centres, including Red Deer. You talked about Peterborough and Trois-Rivières.

I'd be interested to hear from you, from a socio-economic perspective, about moving people between those cities. Is this something that you share?

[Pierre Barrieau]

I agree. Any improvement is going to be an improvement. That has to be clear and transparent.

We have to look at tourism and its impact, and, of course, trains are a major impact on tourism, we know, because it's a question of accessibility. When we look at traffic around the world, people go to countries where there are trains. They will travel much more to regions where there are trains than to those where they have no trains. That's a given.

Regarding your concept of bridging and creating these metropolitan areas and merging them together, that's exactly what Amtrak has been planning since the 1990s with the mega-region concept.

As for Via Rail, yes, they have tourist trains that are long-distance, but we have to look at focusing on where the traffic is and where the demand is, and creating these megaregions is the way to go. As metropolitan areas grow and grow, they're becoming closer and closer together, and more and more people travel between the two.

I used to fly between Montreal and Toronto on the Porter flight. I always took the last flight out when I was teaching at York University, and over half of the people on the plane were always the same people every week. We knew each other.

These communities do exist, and this merging of a lot of workers does exist. We have to set up that service if you want people to use it. If not, they'll use their car.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Ms. Koutrakis.

Thank you, Mr. Barrieau.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, you have the floor for two minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In a previous committee meeting, I asked a witness the same question that I will now put to the witnesses. If I'm not mistaken, 90% of VIA Rail's current revenue comes from the line between Quebec City and Toronto. However, creating a new line operated by the private sector and transferring passenger traffic to it will very likely eat into that 90% of revenue.

VIA Rail has not only this line to cover, but also a number of other regions in Quebec, including Gaspésie, eastern Quebec, Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean and Abitibi-Témiscamingue, and even elsewhere in Canada.

Mr. Kennedy, what could happen financially to VIA Rail if it was to stop operating the northern part of the network and, on top of that, it lost 90% of its revenue, which was already being used to cover the costs of other unprofitable lines?

[Joel Kennedy]

Thank you very much for raising that. That's a very valid point, and that's a major concern of Unifor's as well.

Once we siphon off that money from the corridor, what's going to happen to the rest of Via Rail's operation around Canada? We owe a form of connectivity to our citizens living in rural and urban parts of Canada that are not easily accessed.

What we see here in Manitoba, for example, is very poor train service going up to Churchill. We only get a couple of trains a week, and we're secondary to freights. What we've seen here is similar to the Greyhound story across Canada. We saw that was very good service at one time that was diminished, diminished and diminished, and it doesn't exist any more.

That's exactly our fear once we start siphoning off the profits from the corridor. What's going to happen to the rest of the fleet? Via's fleet right now is aging. It's poor. It's not really practical at all anymore, and it's not reliable. It's a major concern of ours. It's a very valid point that you raised and one that we're very much behind.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Kennedy.

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

Finally for today, we have Mr. Bachrach for two minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will pick up where my colleague left off, because Via Rail in the rest of Canada faces two major threats. One is the fact that HFR, if it's built along the current model, will remove 95% of Via Rail's revenue. It's going to be tasked, unreasonably, with operating passenger rail in the rest of Canada along rural routes with only 5% of its current revenue.

The other major threat it faces for its long-distance routes is the age of its rolling stock. We've heard testimony at committee. Some of us have met with Via's CEO. The situation is quite dire, because the government has put off the replacement of these trains, which were built in the 1950s, for far too long. If we don't see the government committing to the replacement of that rolling stock in this spring's budget, we risk losing all of Via Rail's long-distance routes across Canada.

As someone who represents a riding in remote and rural British Columbia, that's not something I'm going to stand by and allow to happen.

With your forbearance, Mr. Chair, I would like to move the motion I have put on notice. I move:

That the committee report to the House, urging the government to commit in the 2024 budget to the replacement of Via Rail’s long-distance fleet following an expedited timeline that allows for uninterrupted service.

I appreciate that we're near the end of the meeting, but I hope my colleagues will vote in support of this motion. Time is short, and we need to send a unified message to this government that we will not stand by and allow Via Rail passenger service in the rest of Canada, outside the corridor, to wither on the vine. We cannot lose these vital services for rural communities.

With that, Mr. Chair, I'll turn it back to you. I hope we can get to a vote on this motion.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Mr. Muys.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

I move a motion to adjourn.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Okay.

Looking around the room, do we want to go with a recorded vote? Is there any opposition to adjourning?

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

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

We have opposition, so I'll turn it over to the clerk for a recorded vote.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 8; nays 2)

The motion to adjourn carries.

I'd like to thank all of our witnesses on behalf of all members. We wish you a nice rest of your day.

This meeting stands adjourned.