Thank you, Chair and committee members, for inviting Motor Coach Canada, MCC, to present in front of the committee on the impacts of COVID-19 and the reduction of bus services on Canadians and communities across Canada.
MCC is a national, not-for-profit, member-based association representing motorcoach and tour operators across Canada. We represent the interests of bus operators supplying scheduled services, charters, private transit and tourist services, plus tour operators across our great country.
Motorcoach travel is critical to Canada's recovery. Our operators provide cost-effective, safe and environmentally responsible modes of transportation. This not only includes scheduled-service line runs; it also includes moving amateur sports teams, tour groups, universities, colleges, schools, community groups and seniors groups.
Additionally, Motor Coach Canada members provide Canadians with regular, essential and emergency services. For example, motorcoach operators provide transportation for communities that need evacuation and for first responders and emergency services in the medical area and for floods and wildfires.
Our members are primarily small and medium-sized family-owned businesses that have been in this industry for generations. These small businesses play an essential role in connecting our cities, towns and rural communities across Canada. The motorcoach carrier passenger industry of Canada, the bus industry, is a significant force in the Canadian economy. In prepandemic business activity, we had approximately 1,032 companies generating more than $20 billion in operating and non-operating revenues and employing over 118,000 full-time equivalents.
Canada's ground transportation network is currently disconnected, with thousands of routes and hundreds of businesses lost during the pandemic. Service providers were left struggling to restart their businesses. COVID impacts and Greyhound's departure from Canada after nearly a century have left a lasting impact, particularly in rural communities that have relied on buses to connect them to larger towns.
Canadians in both urban and rural communities deserve access to affordable, environmentally friendly transportation. As a result of the COVID pandemic, Canadians have lost their abilities to travel from coast to coast on a single ticket through an affordable and environmentally sustainable mode of transportation. Private motorcoach operators in a post-COVID environment cannot restart all their scheduled service routes as quickly as they would like. Urban routes like Toronto to Montreal are the first to come back. Selling tickets in large populations provides less risk to a private business that depends on the fare box for revenues.
The vast majority of operators are not subsidized. These companies depend on the fares they collect on their ticket sales alone. This means that many rural and remote communities will likely stay disconnected, with limited or no transportation options for years to come. Publicly funded transportation providers cannot reconnect Canada alone. This needs to be done in partnership with private operators.
Canada's travel economy is driven by more than just airlines, rail services and marine transportation. Privately owned motorcoach businesses across Canada are part of Canada's transportation system and must be part of reconnecting our great country.
The Government of Canada's public transit investment funds have been helpful in assisting in building stronger communities, fighting climate change and creating new jobs; however, Canada's private sector transit providers do not receive support through most federal or provincial transportation transfers. They're often not eligible to apply for these programs or grants, nor do they benefit from HST or GST fuel rebates.
This gap in support makes it challenging for private operators to play their vital role in connecting communities and servicing Canadians. They offer hundreds of thousands of kilometres in non-subsidized routes, and they're often the only mode of transportation into and out of rural destinations and communities.
Access to federal transit funding would allow private operators to reconnect rural and urban communities more quickly, and specifically in destinations where public transit is not viable or available.
The federal government has the constitutional responsibility for regulating motorcoach carriers, but through the Motor Vehicle Transport Act it delegates to the provinces the authority to regulate them. This gap has generally left motorcoach carriers without support. Although the government has asked provinces for solutions to help reconnect Canada, the federal government can take even more action and more leadership in redeveloping routes across Canada by a few levers.
First, we recommend—