Transport Committee on Feb. 13th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I call this meeting back to order.

Colleagues, for the second half of our meeting today, appearing as witnesses by video conference, we have Mr. Bruno Dobrusin, manager of the urban transport department of the International Transport Workers’ Federation, and Mr. Joel Kennedy, national rail director of Unifor.

Welcome.

We also welcome Mr. Pierre Barrieau, a lecturer in the faculty of environmental design, school of urban planning and landscape architecture at the Université de Montréal.

Welcome to you all.

Mr. Barrieau, we will begin with your opening remarks. You have the floor for five minutes.

[Pierre Barrieau, Lecturer, Faculty of Environmental Design, School of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture, Université de Montréal, As an Individual]

Hello and thank you for this opportunity to speak to you about such an important topic.

The railway is an important part of the myth of how the modern nation of Canada was built. As you know, with the British North America Act, Canada is the country whose founding documents talk about railways more than any other country in the world.

And yet for the last 50 years, the railway has been relegated to a means of freight transport owing to budget cuts, chronic underfunding, poor technology choices and poor project choices.

This can also be attributed to Canadians raising valid questions about the relevance of the railway. Is it truly a Canadian undertaking? If the train goes through my town once or twice per week, does that service really make me less dependent on my car? The answer is no.

If we want to support an undertaking such as HFT or HST and want Canadians to support it, not only do we need to revitalize rail service in eastern Canada, but we must also support a link between Calgary and Edmonton in the west, as well as links between Vancouver and the United States and Toronto and the United States. Other rail services also have to be revitalized.

If we want to revitalize rail service in Canada, we have to remember that many people do not consider rail travel very relevant or relevant at all. We also have to remember that it is because of gaps in public policy that the importance of rail has decreased and driven people to that conclusion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Barrieau.

Next, we have Mr. Dobrusin.

I'll turn the floor over to you. You have five minutes for your opening remarks, sir.

[Bruno Dobrusin, Manager, Urban Transport Department, International Transport Workers' Federation]

Thank you very much. Good afternoon to members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to present ITF's testimony in this important study.

The International Transport Workers' Federation is a global trade union federation comprising 700 affiliated trade unions from 153 countries, including, in Canada, our rail affiliates, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and Unifor Canada, from which my colleague Joel Kennedy is here today.

We have nearly 20 million affiliated transport workers as members of our organization. Our mission is to safeguard the rights of all transport workers through our global network of affiliated trade unions.

Upon reviewing the testimony presented to this committee on November 6, we noted that there was a consensus regarding the advantages of a high-frequency rail project, including the obvious benefits for passengers, economic growth through job creation and the environmental advantages associated with rail's low-carbon emissions. While we strongly endorse public investment in enhancing and expanding railway systems, we also share some of the concerns that were expressed by Unifor before this committee regarding the public-private partnership model that is being promoted in this case.

The ITF has found that privatization has led to fragmented and inefficient rail systems and contributed to a decline in the quality of the services and the quality of work for the workers involved through P3s. Public-private partnerships in major national and international transport services have incurred some significant financial losses. Unrealistic bids from the private sector to secure contracts have resulted in failures on major routes, burdening governments with financial responsibilities and often leading to substantial subsidies from taxpayers and passengers. Private sector financing has proven more expensive than the public sector alternative, with profits going directly to shareholders and thus causing underinvestment in services.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the United Kingdom. The privatized rail system requires more public funding than it did before the wave of liberalization. Ticket prices for passengers have surged, and U.K. rail users are some of the most dissatisfied passengers in Europe.

The failure of privatization and P3s has resulted in rail services being renationalized or operated as joint government ventures, such as, for example, the Perpignan-Figueres high-speed rail line between France and Spain. Despite the initial promises, it has been up to the public purse to sustain failed private endeavours. Similarly, in 2012 the Argentine national government was forced to renationalize train services after a tragic accident due to poor maintenance and lack of repairs. In Kenya, the Standard Gauge Railway, a P3 with the China Road and Bridge Corporation, faced transparency issues and operational challenges, leading to state takeover just four years into the 10-year contract.

Private sector financing, including P3s, often entails social costs such as poorer working conditions and risks to the health and safety of transport workers, passengers and affected communities. This has been reported by our affiliated unions operating in railway systems around the globe. A 2012 study of rail P3s globally revealed that these projects are successful only when public authorities guarantee profits for private concessionaires. Rail projects for which concessionaires assume financial risks tend to fail.

The Asian Development Bank highlighted in a review of thousands of P3s around the world that out of 6,273 P3 projects, only 216 were completed between 1991 and 2015, and the vast majority had to be put on hold. The U.K.'s experience, again with rail privatization, including that of the London Tube system and national railway services, illustrates failures, escalating costs and adverse outcomes for workers and passengers. When the Eurotunnel was built, the overestimates of ridership as well as escalating construction costs meant liabilities had to be restructured in 1997 and again in 2007. Adding to that, they had to also increase the contract from 55 years to 99 years to guarantee a minimum revenue for the private concessionaires.

Conversely, Germany, Spain and South Korea demonstrate successfully publicly funded high-speed rail systems. Positive outcomes include reduced travel times, economic development and improved connectivity.

In conclusion, P3s and other forms of privatization and contracting out fail to deliver the promised savings and, in many cases, simply fail, as mentioned above.

The ITF recommends that the government review the HFR structure and take bold steps to invest in a genuine, sustainable public passenger rail system, one that is publicly owned, publicly operated and democratically controlled, with good working conditions and safety that ensure a good-quality service.

We hope this will contribute to your reconsidering the HFR project as it stands today.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Dobrusin.

We'll begin our line of questioning in this round with Mr. Strahl.

The floor is yours. You have six minutes.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll start with Mr. Barrieau.

I thought it was an interesting question that you asked. Is it a Canadian project, and what would get that buy-in?

Obviously, we've heard from communities along the route, with proposed stops along the route, that are very much in favour of it. What's your view on how the project as proposed is viewed in communities that are on the current Via line? It's the slow train, if we want to call it that.

How do they view the project, when they are not going to be a stop on the new project? How do you think the new project can address the concerns of those communities, which perhaps feel they are being bypassed?

[Pierre Barrieau]

That's a very interesting question. Every time we proceed with a route change, it has a significant impact on communities that feel abandoned and communities that are now energized by having a new service.

I have long been a proponent of a bigger picture. If we take the segment between Montreal and Quebec City, I'm not necessarily against going on the north shore instead of the south shore. It means we can diminish our reliance on the bridge between Quebec and Lévis, and we can get out of the CN corridor.

However, we have to build bridges, and we have to build partnerships, and I strongly believe the solution to fix what you're talking about is quite simple.

In Montreal, we have something called commuter rail, which is trains running on one line between Montreal and Mont-Saint-Hilaire. It would be quite simple in the private sector and hopefully not excruciatingly painful for the public sector to negotiate a deal with the provincial government's Exo and quite simply bring a few of the trains that are running between Montreal and Mont-Saint-Hilaire to two more stops: Saint-Hyacinthe and Drummondville.

By doing that, you're basically serving almost the totality of the traffic with very little subsidy, compared to running trains that are going to be mostly empty if Via Rail is forced to continue to operate regular trains on the south shore.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

We heard in our previous panel that the typical cost of a ticket to go from a regular train.... The current service—this is in Europe—costs about 50% to 100% more once a new high-frequency or high-speed rail service is implemented.

Obviously, people like the idea. They like the way it sounds, with increased connectivity, more frequent rail, modern services, etc., but when it comes down to paying for it....

Have you done any modelling or are there any studies that you're aware of that have looked at what people are willing to pay for that shiny new service?

[Pierre Barrieau]

You're asking a multi-faceted question. It's actually also a fascinating question, if you want to do a little word play on it.

We have to understand here that high-frequency rail is not going to significantly increase ticket prices if we compare it to other services around the world. In many cases, actually, high-frequency rail was able to bring sufficient ridership to bring about a decrease.

If we go to high-speed rail, it's a whole new ball game. If you go to Italy or France, you're going to have a two-tiered system. The faster you go, the more you pay with high-speed rail. In that case, it's a significantly important question. Yes, high-frequency rail is potentially going to bring higher costs.

However, one footnote I would add is that we are now seeing the rise of low-cost high-speed rail in Europe, including Ouigo, which is operated by SNCF. It's running high-frequency rail on a low-cost airline model, which is bringing costs down.

That's what we're seeing right now in the market in Europe, and what we're seeing elsewhere in many countries, including South Korea and Japan.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

I want to go back to your first answer, when you talked about running empty trains once the HFR is built.

When Via, the current operator, came before us, they believed the new passenger-only dedicated line wouldn't have an impact on their business. Do you agree with that? It's hard to believe that it wouldn't, if there were significant passenger volumes being redirected to the HFR project.

I bring this up because you mentioned running empty trains. Do you think this is a risk to the current mainline communities and the viability of the current Via model? Do you view this as a competitor, or is it complementary?

[Pierre Barrieau]

It is complementary. However, with the current ridership level, it is hard to sustain that complementary service, basically because almost the totality of the ridership between Montreal and Quebec City will go automatically on the higher-speed and higher-frequency service. They're not going to stay on the slow traffic.

Those who will stay on that line are the people going to Saint-Hyacinthe and Drummondville. That is a small percentage of the current market share. If we take that market share of Saint-Hyacinthe and Drummondville, the vast majority of those people are actually going towards Montreal, not towards Quebec City. Therefore, the Drummondville to Quebec City is a segment that, in terms of feasibility, will be diminished.

Let's not forget that Via Rail could also decide to operate a codeshare with a bus service, which would also significantly lower operating costs.

I see very rare experiences around the world where we have a service that is 40% faster and is every hour, and people decide no, they'd prefer to take the unreliable and slower route.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Barrieau.

Thank you, Mr. Strahl.

Next we have Mr. Badawey.

The floor is yours. You have six minutes, please.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to preface my comments to state that the committee study will in fact contribute to the planning, or some of the information, that Via HFR will utilize within its planning process.

With that said, it is important that the analysts hear the testimony that will achieve that important input that then will be featured in our final report to the minister.

Mr. Chair, through budget 2022, Transport Canada and Infrastructure Canada received $396.8 million in funding over the next two years to advance this project through the procurement phase.

As part of the planning process, I want to ask Mr. Barrieau this.

With your experience as an urban planner in landscape architecture, how important is to work with the local level of government to recognize both municipal official plans and the secondary plans that add infrastructure capacity to those official plans?

How important it is to recognize those two segments of the planning process within a local community to ensure compatible land use planning?

[Pierre Barrieau]

It's fundamental. If we look at train systems that are successes around the world, there are those that have worked with cities and communities to build high-density destinations around train stations. As long as we build train stations that are far from where people live, that are hard to get to, and where there's not much to do around them, it's hard to get ridership.

While the Ottawa train station is beautiful, the reality is that if we still had the old Rideau station, downtown on Rideau Street, ridership would be higher.

What we have to do here is build communities around these stations and connect with airports, which is fundamental. Those are the two main drivers for ridership: airports and downtowns. That's what we have to work on.

The federal government has to create these partnerships with cities and communities to get the ball rolling.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Barrieau. I'm happy you said that. That will now go on the record and be part of our final report because of its importance.

We've heard that a priority is dedicated track for both HFR and HSR. We're going to dedicate track between trade and people, which is a great thing.

However, I think we really have to be cognizant of what high speed actually does and what high frequency actually does. That is, high frequency stops a lot. With that, it's very difficult to then have high speed and get up to those speeds when you have to stop a lot and/or have trains in front of you that are stopping a lot.

I'll guess I'll rely on some experience that you may have on the infrastructure of dedicated track to people. To allow for high-speed and high-frequency track, can sidings be built on the main line or off the main line to allow high-frequency trains to stop frequently and make room for high-speed trains?

[Pierre Barrieau]

Yes. However, I would not go toward the siding approach. It's more about getting four-track stations. The idea that we see in most successful European and Asian systems is that you do the scheduling so that at a local stop, the train is able to stop locally and the high-speed train is able to bypass it while it's loading and unloading passengers.

It's a bit like how the transitway in Ottawa used to operate. While buses were loading and off-loading, there were bypass lanes where the direct service buses could go straight. They were able to bypass the embarking and disembarking traffic, let's say at Hurdman station.

That way, you're able to build two tracks on the full length, and at your stations you build four. That's where you schedule the bypassing.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Barrieau.

It was mentioned also—and I want to ensure that this stays on the record—that alignment with all methods of transportation is very important, keeping in mind that a benefit to this is, again, as I said earlier, the separation of lines—trade and people—from moving goods and people. However, there's the importance of aligning all methods of transportation, including a line service provider. We have airports. In my area we have the Great Lakes cruising; we have Great Lakes shipping, and we have other methods of transportation such as road. We have Metrolinx, which has GO Transit coming in from the GTA; and of course we have intermunicipal transit systems and short lines.

How important is it to align the different methods of transportation and the transportation systems all in one area?

[Pierre Barrieau]

It's fundamental. If we want to diminish the dependency of Canadians on the automobile, we have to give them a viable option. That viable option comes by having a system that takes them from everywhere to everywhere. As long as we are not able to provide a viable alternative to the automobile, people won't use it. I own a car. Why? Because transit doesn't take me everywhere I have to go in an efficient way.

You give the example of a commuter train in Toronto. A great example of service integration is what we have in suburban Los Angeles, where a monthly pass holder can jump on the Amtrak train or on the Metrolink of Los Angeles between the same stations, and that permits people to try Amtrak and use it sometimes. You're bringing more riders and you're filling up trains. It's always a question of filling up the vehicles to diminish passenger cost.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

I have a last question. With respect to our domestic benefits and to try to create more of both capital and operating funding to then help pay not only for the system but for the managing of the system as time goes on, with the replacement that will be needed 30, 40, 50 years down the road, do you feel that we should be discussing this not only here in Canada with our partners but also binationally with our American partners? Therefore, we are actually connecting, for example, Toronto to New York, Toronto to Chicago, Toronto to Detroit and those areas as well. Do you think it's important that we start embarking on that discussion as well?

[Pierre Barrieau]

Yes. I would say that the American government has been a better partner than the Canadian government, in that Amtrak comes into Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, and Via Rail is lacking in terms of co-operation compared to our American friends to the south.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Barrieau, and thank you, Mr. Badawey.

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to welcome all the witnesses.

Mr. Barrieau, your remarks were very interesting and covered considerable ground. I hope I have time to get to all the things I want to talk to you about.

In a Radio-Canada interview in July 2021, you said high-frequency rail would pave the way for high-speed rail. That was interesting because it is at the centre of our current discussion, as we are wondering whether we should choose high-frequency rail, high-speed rail or a combination of the two.

A question came to mind that you might be able to answer. Why should we invest tens of billions of dollars in high-frequency rail, knowing that we will have to start over again in 10, 15, 20, 30 or 50 years for high-speed rail? Considering how long it will take for high-frequency rail to be operational—it will not be available for 10 or 15 years—is it realistic to think about starting over again to create high-speed rail? What are your thoughts on the roll-out of all of this?

[Pierre Barrieau]

I think your timelines are a bit optimistic. Realistically, once the federal government has been convinced to start building high-frequency rail, for instance, we can expect it will be at least 50 years before they want to build high-speed rail, in my opinion.

Personally, I think Canadians want high-speed rail and that there is a market for it. I also think Canada's airports are at full capacity and that it will be difficult to use environmental studies to make the case for expanding airport capacity. So it would be better to remove unnecessary flights, such as those between Ottawa and Montreal or Toronto and London, to encourage people to take the train.

That said, I do not think that Canadians and the federal government have the appetite to invest $120 billion to build the system. The government has come up with another strategy, a hybrid rail system, which would travel at high speeds along certain lines. For my part, I would suggest you look at what the government did in France. Between Paris and Lyon, the train will travel at 300 kilometres per hour. Beyond that point, the same train will travel more slowly to Marseille.

The Canadian government could therefore decide, at a minimum, to massively upgrade the section between Montreal, Ottawa and Smiths Fall, which is already mostly owned by VIA Rail. That would mean that all trains travelling between Montreal and Toronto would go through Ottawa. The speed could be increased in certain areas. Heading east, the train would initially travel slowly to Quebec City, at 160 to 200 kilometres per hour. As the government injects more funding, the situation could be improved. That is what we hope for.

That said, if we decide to use the current corridor through Peterborough as it is, we will have problems along the curves because the lines are too narrow for a high-speed train, and much of the expense will be wasted.

In closing, let me make a comparison to Ottawa's Transitway. The planners said they would create a bus system and that nearly all of the investment would be held back for potential light rail. In reality, when the O-Train was built, hundreds of millions of dollars had to be spent to widen the 417 so buses could also use it temporarily. It was a construction site for six years, and nearly all the money invested in the Transitway was wasted to build the O-Train. People say that we could make gradual improvements, but that is easier said than done, unfortunately.

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

Thank you, that was very insightful.

As you said, the objective of such a project is to reduce road and air traffic and to increase the use of rail transportation. That said, we are unfortunately under the impression that, if the proposed train reduces the commute time between Montreal and Quebec City from three hours and 25 minutes to three hours, it won't be much better than the time it takes to drive. The government is proposing a high-frequency train, but some would prefer a high-speed train, and others say the solution is a hybrid train—a high-frequency train that increases its speed on certain lines.

Is that a solution that would save us enough time to compete with the airplane and the train? It seems to me that what is on the table right now would basically result in spending a lot of money without a sufficient increase in the number of users.

[Pierre Barrieau]

The Montreal-Quebec trip is definitely an example of what can cause problems. Those who are familiar with the area know that trains from Quebec City have to go all the way to Dorval and turn around before coming back to the downtown area; trains cannot easily access the downtown area.

I think we have to ask ourselves the following question. Does the high-frequency train really need to get into downtown Montreal? There is actually a mantra according to which the train must go to downtown Montreal. However, if the answer to my question is no, it is possible to reduce the travel time by 20 minutes. For example, there could be a station in the Saint-Laurent borough and a mega-station in Dorval. People could also use the Réseau express métropolitain, REM, to get to Saint-Laurent in four minutes.

In Japan, a number of high-speed train stations have been built in the suburbs, including in Osaka and Tokyo, because bringing them downtown would require tunnels that are too expensive. So there is a way to optimize the route and the journey, even though I know that not everyone agrees on that. Some people believe that trains should go to downtown Montreal. But if I can reduce the trip time by 20 minutes, including the time spent on the REM, I would personally prefer that option.

For the rest of the line, the time savings would be better, including for the Ottawa-Montreal trip. You have to remember that the time VIA Rail is proposing for the trip between Ottawa and Montreal with a high-frequency train is almost identical to what it was more than 20 years ago, one hour and 21 minutes.