Transport Committee on March 21st, 2024

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

The federal government will help to build out some of those road projects for a smoother travel experience.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Minister.

Mr. Barsalou‑Duval, the floor is yours for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks as well to Mr. Fraser for being with us today to resolve the unfortunate situation in which we now find ourselves as a result of the statements made by the Minister of Environment and Climate Change.

I suppose that, since you're the first of three ministers to appear before us today, you'll be setting the tone.

So you will be the one conveying the official version, or at least the person most responsible within government for decisions regarding the funding of roads.

As you're no doubt aware, Mr. Guilbeault stated not long ago that his government had made the decision to stop investing in new road infrastructure. That statement was very clear.

In the end, you said your government was going to continue investing in roads.

Would you please confirm whether the statement that Mr. Guilbeault made is consistent with your government's policy?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Guilbeault recently clarified those comments and explained that they referred to specific projects such as the third link in Quebec.

Mr. Guilbeault, Mr. Rodriguez and I will be writing a letter to clarify the situation. We're making infrastructure investments—

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

That answer is clear enough for me; I understand that it means no. So what Mr. Guilbeault said isn't consistent with your government's policy. You don't want to say it in so many words, but that's what I understand from your answer.

I imagine that people are consulted and discussions conducted before any government announcements are made, as when a minister states that the government has made a decision.

How does that work? How could a minister say such a thing if it wasn't consistent with government policy?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

You should put that question toMr. Guilbeault. The good news is that he'll be here this morning to discuss it. It's good because when I read his initial comments, I was in a meeting with my British Columbia counterpart discussing infrastructure investments, including in road infrastructure such as highways and other projects.

From my perspective, it's a question you can put to Minister Guilbeault, but we're going to continue to meet this objective.

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

I'll definitely ask him the question.

You say you come from Nova Scotia, a region of vast expanses. Quebec has vast expanses too. Thousands of Quebeckers currently have no road links to the national highway system. It's quite remarkable to hear such a statement from a minister. I don't know if you've thought of the people who have no road access and who've been told that no new roads will be built. That makes no sense. Thousands of people have been neglected for tens, even hundreds, of years, and they hope one day to see a road built to their door. We have a central government telling them it doesn't think they count. That's not a very positive statement.

Moving on to another topic, yesterday my leader asked the Prime Minister twice whether your government was willing to require Quebec municipalities to use money from the Canada community-building fund for housing. The purpose of that fund is, among other things, to fund water and sewage treatment plants and roads.

The Prime Minister clearly hasn't understood that. He has no idea what the Canada community-building fund is, even though your government allocates $2 billion a year to it.

Did you speak with the Prime Minister before your government hijacked the cities' money and interfered in a jurisdiction that is not its own?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

It's not a new program. It's designed to give municipalities an opportunity to make investments to improve their infrastructure. No changes have been made to program eligibility.

However, I need to support efforts to build housing in response to the housing crisis. I want to advance common priorities that we have with the provinces, territories and municipalities. The goal is to facilitate housing construction.

We're discussing the issue with the provinces. The government can discuss opportunities for advancing our common priorities—

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

As you know, the Union des municipalités du Québec opposes your wish to make housing construction an eligibility criterion for that fund. The Fédération québécoise des municipalités disagrees, and, as far as I know, the Quebec government does too.

You're also aware that money is earmarked for other needs such as sewers, roads, aqueducts and water treatment.

Will you tell those municipalities they now have to build housing?

In the end, don't you think your policy is exactly the same as that of the Conservatives, who insult the mayors, call them incompetent and threaten to cut off their food supplies if they don't do what the Conservatives have decided to do to force them to build housing that, in some instances, they're unable to build?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I want to point out that this is a different policy.

We've not made changes to say that you have to spend this money on housing now. It's still going to be spent on the same kinds of projects as before. We're discussing, in the agreements we reach with provincial governments.... There are some exceptions in different provinces. We're going to identify priorities around producing housing needs assessments for larger communities and around certain changes they can make that will make it easier to build housing as we move forward with multi-billion-dollar transfers to provinces.

However, we're not telling municipalities they have to start spending this money on housing. We have ancillary policies that we're working on to negotiate with provincial governments, primarily, that will facilitate the process of building housing as part of the transfer of funds.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou‑Duval.

Next we have Mr. Bachrach. The floor is yours for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being with us today.

You mentioned in a previous response that you met recently with your provincial counterpart in British Columbia, Minister Fleming. I thought I would start there.

Northwest B.C. is a region I represent. That region, specifically Tahltan territory, is a major mineral producer. Several active mines are currently producing critical minerals. I know this is a priority of your government. Through the critical minerals strategy, your government has committed to investing in infrastructure that supports this work.

Highway 37, which services that region as well as several indigenous communities, has seen a huge increase in industrial traffic. It wasn't built for the traffic it's seeing. As a result, we're seeing some seriously unsafe situations. There have been over 500 road accidents on that highway alone since 2018. On Monday, we heard from the chief of the Telegraph band about an 83-year-old in Telegraph Creek who was experiencing chest pain. Emergency responders weren't able to get to Telegraph Creek by road because Highway 51, which accesses Telegraph Creek from Highway 37, was not in a condition they could travel on.

The B.C. government has committed to investing significant funds to upgrade Highway 37 and Highway 51 to serve both the indigenous communities that rely on them and the mining industry that's active in that region.

My question is a simple one: Will your government be there and contribute the federal resources that are necessary to improve the safety and accessibility of those highways?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

First, thanks very much. I find there is great value when members of Parliament can provide that local context on projects, so I appreciate it. Having sat on this committee for a number of years, I made efforts to do the same with some of the projects that were most important in my community. It's possible that we can support projects of this nature.

We've not made a decision to date on whether there's funding going into a particular project. It's not because we're sitting around and delaying, but because when there are highway projects, typically the primary jurisdiction falls within a provincial government, or it can be a municipality, depending on the nature of the specific project. We don't pick individual projects and say we're cutting a cheque for this or that. We establish programs that can fund different kinds of projects that are eligible and then rely on partners who have primary jurisdiction to prioritize those projects.

It's a discussion I'd be more than willing to entertain with the provincial government of British Columbia in order to understand which projects we may be able to fund. Of course, they go through an exercise of allocating their share of a federal program.

Of course, in the future there may be new or different programs that would change the eligibility. However, if you want to have a discussion off-line with me or my team to identify opportunities, that's something we'd be happy to do.

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

Yes, I appreciate that, Minister.

Specifically, the Province of British Columbia has approached your government and asked for a partnership to support this work through the critical minerals strategy. It's my hope and desire that you will engage in that work as the minister responsible for infrastructure and ensure this important region in northern British Columbia gets the infrastructure support it deserves.

I'll move on more broadly to other infrastructure issues that are challenging for communities in the region I represent.

The community of Smithers applied in 2020 for an important waste-water project. They've been receiving letters from your counterpart, the environment minister, saying that they're no longer in compliance with federal waste-water regulations. They applied in 2020. They were turned down in 2021. They revamped their project. They reapplied in 2022. Now it's been almost two yours since they've heard back from your government about whether they're going to get the funding.

In northern B.C., as you know, the construction season is very short. Every season that goes by without putting shovels in the ground is another season when the community risks not being in compliance with your government's own waste-water regulations. Their effluent, of course, goes into the Bulkley River, which is part of the Skeena watershed, an important wild salmon river. Everyone wants to see this cleaned up. Everyone wants to do the right thing and accommodate the future growth of the community.

Can you tell the people of Smithers when they're going to hear back from your department about this important infrastructure project?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Before I give you an answer, on the more recent application you referred to, do you know which program it has come in through?

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

My assumption is that it was applied for through the ICIP program, the investing in Canada infrastructure program.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Certainly.

Just by way of process, when we put funding on the table, we then invite provincial governments that we reach a bilateral agreement with to send a list of their ranked priorities in order to use the funding that we have made available for water and wastewater. By and large, we meet the priorities that are identified by provincial governments.

We can look into this specific project, but it will depend on whether the provincial government has exhausted its allocation under the fund and the water and waste-water stream. If funding remains available and the provincial government wishes to advance it, and presuming it's eligible—which it sounds from your description as though it could be—it sounds as though it would be a meritorious project, but I'd have to look at the assessment.

Of course, that would also rely upon the provincial government's decision regarding whether to prioritize or not prioritize a specific project.

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

Thank you, Minister.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bachrach.

Next we have Mr. Muys. Mr. Muys, you have five minutes. Go ahead, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Minister, when you said there's been no policy change, as you did in your opening remarks, I found that hard to believe, because yesterday Global News reported—and let me read the headline—that “Guilbeault's road funding remarks send staff scrambling, emails show.” This was the result of an information access request that Global News made, to which it got two days' worth of emails from your department, Infrastructure Canada.

To quote some of what was revealed in those emails, there was “'quite the blowback'”, and we need to urgently find out what roads were funded this year and last year and give some examples. There was some scrambling to cover up.

Maybe you can comment on how that seems to be at odds with your comment that the policy has not changed.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

When I first saw reporting on the comments, I wanted to look into where it had come from. Subsequently, Minister Guilbeault provided clarification and indicated that he was referring to a specific project.

It's important to me—not just as the minister but also as a member of Parliament for a rural community—that we can demonstrate, including in my own community, that when people have concerns about whether we build roads, that we do build roads.

There hasn't been a policy shift. I expect it was a misunderstanding that was playing out in public. It was subsequently clarified, but it required us to demonstrate publicly that in fact there hasn't been a policy change.

I can reassure you that we have maintained support for road building and that there hasn't been a policy change.

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

I challenge that, because the quotes that were read in full by my colleague Dr. Lewis about how our government has made a decision to stop funding roads would indicate that that's a pretty massive shift from what you've been talking about.

Also, in response to Mr. Rogers, you made the comment that without federal involvement, a lot of these projects wouldn't happen.

We've heard from mayors, from premiers, from ministers of transportation at the provincial level and from many different stakeholders. They all raised alarm bells upon hearing these comments, so it was not just your department that was sent scrambling. A lot of others were as well.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I'm sorry, but I'm unclear on what the question may be.

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

It wasn't a question; it was a comment.

This seems to be a pattern. My colleague referred to comments by the member for Milton, who actually has two Ontario 400-series highways going through his riding. That was two and a half years ago.

There were comments last summer from the Minister of Finance about how people in P.E.I. should hop on the subway, so this seems to be a war on cars. It seems to be an inconsistency—or maybe actually a consistency in the policy, and this has been the plan all along—and so what Minister Guilbeault did was just say the quiet part out loud.