Transport Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2022

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you.

Continuing with Mr. D'Angelo, some politicians have called for a publicly run national intercity bus network through the creation of a new Crown corporation or an expansion of the mandate of VIA Rail to include public bus transportation.

What are your thoughts on this? Is it realistic? How would it be viewed by provinces? There are sensitivities around the jurisdictional piece, so we need to be very mindful of that. Do you have any idea how much this might cost?

[Marco D'Angelo]

I will think outside the box with you for a moment on the question. Thank you for it.

We know that with funding, innovation can occur, so it's looking at different pilots to meet the needs of different regions. For example, the distances between towns in Atlantic Canada are a lot shorter. We have examples like Kings County transit, which links maybe 10 or more communities in Nova Scotia. That's been a great service that they're providing. Earlier, I mentioned the Niagara region.

I think it's important to connect folks, especially in the farther areas. I'm thinking about northern Ontario. There was a study that was completed in I think 2014 by the Ontario government in looking at different options to provide bus service to supplement the service that VIA Rail isn't capable of providing, simply because it needs additional fleet and additional support. We think that in looking at that there are a lot of opportunities there. There are different rights-of-way.

There are a lot of creative solutions, but there's no one solution for a country the size of Canada when most of the time we're moving people between cities under 100 kilometres apart.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

I have one last question, if I have time, Mr. Chair. My last question is for Tracy MacPhee.

It's really nice to see you again. I saw you in person when I was passing through Edmonton this past summer at the Railway Association conference. In your view, will the proposed high-frequency rail project have implications for intercity bus travel? If so, could you elaborate on that piece for us, please?

[Tracy MacPhee]

The high-frequency rail is in a corridor that Ontario Northland does not operate in right now. In terms of how that will impact us, I do not see that coming into play.

We are looking at the return of the northeastern passenger rail that will connect the communities from northern Ontario down into Toronto. We will be bringing in our bus service to enhance and connect with that rail service, but as I said, the light rail that is being talked about is not in our territory.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

You still have one minute, Ms. Koutrakis.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

That's great.

Would any of our other witnesses like to chime in on any of the questions I've asked?

[Vince Accardi]

I think there is a lot of out-of-the-box thinking happening already in our industry. We're working in partnership with both privately and publicly funded organizations. I think the mechanisms that are available to the government are to open up some of the current programs to private operators to ensure that we can help to support this connectivity.

As I said, privately funded organizations cannot do this alone. It has to be a partnership. We have members—folks like Rider and others—who are ready to help. We just need to make sure that from a business perspective they have the support to ensure that they'll at least break even on these routes as they start. Without any other form of support available to them, it just won't happen.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. Koutrakis.

Thank you, Mr. Accardi.

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

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd also like to thank the witnesses for being with us today.

We're very happy to see you here. It's an important subject, particularly in rural areas, where people have been seriously affected.

During the pandemic, I heard that there had been a complete shutdown of services and that some companies, private carriers in particular, were facing serious financial problems.

I had the opportunity to meet a few representatives of these companies during that time. They told me that there was government assistance for labour and rents, but that transportation companies did not receive any particular assistance. That meant that the buses stayed parked. However, they had to continue to pay expenses, even if they were not operating their bus lines. The situation at the time had become very complex.

Mr. Accardi, How did you experience the situation and where do you stand today?

[Vince Accardi]

It continues to be challenging for private operators, postpandemic. Our members were very thankful for the support the government did come to the table with in terms of rent subsidies and wage subsidies.

You're absolutely right: Their assets were parked, and they're not meant to be parked. There was not much available to help them restart those assets and get them safe to be back on the road. These are big vehicles. Our members were spending $30,000 to $50,000 per unit to get them out of the parking lots, safe and back on the road. That's simply because they were parked.

That was a big challenge that took some capacity out of the system. We're about 80% down from where we were, just in terms of the number of vehicles. Then we added on supply chain issues for parts and other things that we've heard so much about in the automotive sector. It was the same for buses.

It's a very big challenge, but we are thankful for the support that was available to us. Hopefully, through this committee's work, there might be more opportunity in the future.

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

In your address, you said that it was important for the private sector to play a role in serving communities. You felt that in certain instances, government support is needed to accomplish that, because not all of the routes are profitable. I can understand that, but you then said in another part of your response that there were ways of providing support other than direct funding for overhead costs and routes. That made me curious. Can you tell us more about it? What are means does the government have?

[Vince Accardi]

Thank you for giving me an opportunity to finish the “what we recommend” part of my submission.

Certainly tax incentives are helpful, as are fuel rebates. Private operators do not get fuel rebates, or HST or GST. These are levers that are available to the federal government to make happen now.

Then, of course, we recommend programs that would support the development of cross-province routes, just to ensure that there are no shortcomings while the route is being developed. I know that is a form of a subsidy, but it's really what we're calling “gap funding” for subsidy development. This is where our publicly funded partners are just not able to provide those services or where there are no services other than a privately funded organization.

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

Thank you.

My next questions are for Mr. D'Angelo.

During the pandemic, the federal government, unusually enough, with a view to keeping public transit going, provided ad hoc assistance to provincial governments, which then redistributed funds to their local public transit corporations. I had the opportunity to meet the representatives of several of these. They told me that this assistance had been helpful, but they would have liked to have still more. Even today, some have not recovered entirely from the problems they went through at the time.

A number of these representatives wanted regular, ongoing and stable financing from the federal government for public transit. They argued that although the idea of infrastructure funding was interesting, it led to additional operating expenses that they would have to pay. At the same time, these entities are not accountable to the federal government, but to the provinces or municipalities.

How then to go about doing something that would actually work? Do you have any ideas about that?

[Marco D'Angelo]

Thank you.

It was definitely a major challenge. The public transit companies in Quebec and Canada are delighted to be able to build more infrastructure and to purchase the zero-emission vehicles, but the operating expenses for these vehicles are very high and it's difficult to directly request more and more public funding to pay these expenses. Solutions have to be found.

As you mentioned, billions of dollars are spent on financing major projects, but more funds are required to cover the operating expenses involved in maintaining services to the public. One of the possible solutions would be to renew the agreement announced on February 17 for next year, until the economy recovers and ridership gets back to normal.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. D'Angelo and Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

Next we have Mr. Bachrach.

Mr. Bachrach, the floor is yours. You have six minutes.

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

Thanks so much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses. I think this is a really important study.

I come to this from the perspective of a part of the country that has predominately rural and remote communities. I was thinking about it, and I believe that transportation options, particularly for low-income folks in rural Canada, are worse now than they have been in a hundred years.

We used to have a train that ran on time, a passenger rail system that was given priority on the rail corridor. In the part of the world where I live, the train might be eight hours late. We used to have a bus service, a national bus service on which you could travel from coast to coast on a single ticket, a service that served almost every rural community in the country. Now, as we've heard, we have a patchwork that fills a fraction of what Greyhound used to serve. I think this is a huge gap in our country, and it has truly national implications, so I'm very appreciative that the committee has made time to talk about this issue.

I want to start by talking about the issue of leadership. What we've heard from the witnesses so far is that there is a need for someone to pull together all of these strings and to create something from what exists in this patchwork of public and private bus options across the country.

Perhaps I'll direct this question to Mr. Johnson. I wonder who in Canada right now is best positioned to provide that leadership.

[Terence Johnson]

Thank you for that question. The leadership has to come from the federal government, though not all the control.

The way I look at this is that there's a great deal of difference between leadership and control. The federal government needs to actually put some effort behind its desire under the Accessible Canada Act, under its response to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and under its commitment to reconciliation. That has to be met with effort to get into the details. There is a gap here. The private sector can't fill it at the moment. Why not? Can the public sector fill it? Does it make sense?

It is, as I said in my remarks, a very complex ecosystem. There are tremendous synergies between being a charter bus operator in a region and being the passenger operator. Those economic synergies make it a lot easier to deliver a national network using the private sector as a major partner, but a lot of our bus companies are small, locally owned Canadian and indigenous-owned. If you start a franchising system with a really complicated procurement process, you're going to squeeze them out. They're just not going to put up with that amount of paperwork. Their expertise is running buses.

Therefore, there are no magic solutions here—

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

I'm going to run out of minutes.

I've spoken to the Transport Minister about this very topic and I've asked for that leadership. I've asked him to pull together all these pieces across the country and deliver bus transportation for all Canadians. He has said it's not his jurisdiction and it's up to the provinces. What do you make of that response?

[Terence Johnson]

That's inaccurate.

As we've heard, this is not in the constitution of provincial responsibility. That is delegated. The federal government can re-issue the role of regulator, especially across interprovincial bus services, which is the whole national network. What gets cut in one place harms the whole ecosystem.

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

If we leave it up to the provinces, what's the probability that we will end up with a cohesive national bus transportation system?

[Terence Johnson]

It's not great.

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

I'll turn to our friends from the bus transport industry.

I'm curious: Today, what percentage of Greyhound's peak network has been restored?

I'll start with Mr. D'Angelo. I don't know if you have the answer to this question at your fingertips, or if Mr. Accardi does. I mean just a ballpark number, like within 10%. Do we have half of it back? Do we have 80%?

[Marco D'Angelo]

You mean in terms of the intercity bus that was vacated by the previous company operating?

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

If you think of the number of routes and the frequency of bus service that Greyhound at its peak service levels delivered for Canadians, what percentage are we at today when it comes to bus transport?

Mr. Uray, would you hazard a guess?

[Firat Uray]

I think right now in the five provinces—Alberta, B.C., Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario—we can say we are covering 50% of what Greyhound had.