Transport Committee on Nov. 30th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting No. 43 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Thursday, February 3, 2022, the committee is meeting to study inter-city transport by bus in Canada.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

Appearing before us by video conference today as witnesses, we have Dr. Jacob Alhassan, assistant professor, department of community health and epidemiology, college of medicine, University of Saskatchewan, and Dr. Cindy Hanson, professor, department of sociology and social studies, University of Regina. They are appearing as individuals.

Joining us by video conference, we also have, from Coach Atlantic Maritime Bus, Michael Cassidy, owner; from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, we have Matt Gemmel, director, policy and research; and from Kasper Transportation, we have Kasper Wabinski, president.

I'd like to take this opportunity to inform members that all of today's video conference witness participants have completed the necessary audiovisual checks.

Once again, I'll look over to our esteemed translators to get the thumbs-up and make sure everything is good on their end.

We will now begin the opening remarks with Dr. Jacob Alhassan for five minutes.

Sir, the floor is yours.

[Dr. Jacob Alhassan, Assistant Professor, Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Let me start by acknowledging that I'm joining you today from Saskatoon, on Treaty 6 territory, the traditional homeland of the Métis. I pay my respects to the first nations and Métis ancestors of this land.

Over the past years, I've had the opportunity to conduct research on how the absence of intercity public transportation affects marginalized communities. Based on my findings, I believe that Canada needs a national public transportation system.

First, public transportation promotes access to opportunities and services, and this ultimately improves population health. Access to safe, reliable and inclusive intercity public transportation is connected to road traffic accidents, health care and other outcomes. Countries with well-funded bus systems have lower accident rates because buses are less prone to accidents than private vehicles. For example, comparisons with other OECD countries reveal that Canada has higher traffic fatality rates than the OECD average, and this is likely because there are few public transport options. For this reason, people rely on private vehicles, which have a much higher likelihood of being involved in collisions than buses.

Additionally, access to safe and reliable bus travel reduces transport poverty and facilitates access to economic and other opportunities. Whether or not people can access health care, groceries and other services depends on the availability of consistent, reliable and safe public transportation.

Public transportation is also much better for the environment, because while a bus may carry, say, 50 people from one city to another, the absence of a bus means 50 cars on the road, or perhaps 25 if people are driving in pairs.

Although the absence of public transportation negatively affects all people, these impacts are never felt equally, but disproportionately affect seniors, indigenous communities, women, people with disabilities, youth and other vulnerable and marginalized populations. In Canada, these realities have been compounded and acutely felt by many following the loss of the Greyhound bus company.

I want to share a story about how the loss of a public intercity bus system in Saskatchewan caused untold suffering among the most marginalized.

In 2017, the Saskatchewan Transportation Company, or STC, a 70-year-old bus service, was shut down by our provincial government as part of an austerity budget. At the time of the closure, the STC had a fleet of 41 buses connecting about 253 communities and travelling 2.8 million miles per year. The closure of STC without any research evidence, ostensibly to save $85 million, provides an important case study to understand what happens when we lose intercity public transportation.

The STC had relied on a balance scorecard system, providing its services not for profit but to facilitate access to key services for some of the most vulnerable people in the province. For example, patients travelling for physician-prescribed treatments could obtain a medical pass for $54, and this enabled unlimited travel on a specified travel corridor for 30 days. To put things in context, the STC's annual operation grant of $14.2 million meant that the buses then cost only about $14 per person to run.

Saskatchewan's health system relied on the buses to transport vaccines and equipment, and STC's closure left it stranded. Many health workers had to unhappily inform patients that their medications were unavailable because there was no bus to transport these medications.

Additionally, the loss of the bus led to isolation and a disproportionate driving burden, often borne by middle-aged women, who assumed the role of caregivers for ailing relatives.

I developed the concept of the web of dispossession to highlight this complexity. Lack of public transportation affects all of us, even if we do not realize it.

There are so many stories I could share about how the absence of a public bus system affects people, and I want to share the story of someone I interviewed three years ago.

Louise was a 60-year-old indigenous woman from Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan. She's a grandmother who has worked in indigenous social work. Louise suffers from paralysis, and at the beginning of our interview she asked me if I knew what it was like to be paralyzed. Although it was a simple question, it had never crossed my mind.

Because Louise needed to attend regular treatments for cancer and faced several challenges doing this, she used a wheelchair, which came at a significant cost.

Given the unpredictability of the weather, she described many situations in which she would have preferred a public bus. She recounted one example of being stuck in a blizzard, and this is a quote from her:

I had a catheter. Then by standing on the side of the road because of the blizzard, the motor filled up with snow and wouldn't stay running because it had so much snow in it. This was not a predicted blizzard, that's the thing that you deal with. It could be nice on this side of the valley, but the other side of the valley, when you're driving, it could be horrible. That's exactly what happened. I had to wait and get rescued. Now, who needs that when they're sick? It was so cold in that car that there were ice crystals forming in my urine bag.

Stories like this highlight the importance of creating a national public transportation system to ensure that people can access needed services without such profound loss of human dignity.

In many ways, our current status quo is exclusionary and problematic. In a country like Canada, where it is widely believed that the health system is robust and health care is free at the point of use, there are many among us who cannot exercise their right to health. No matter how well we improve health services, people need to be able to get to these services for them to make a difference.

Canada needs a national public transportation system guided by human rights principles, equity and inclusion, rather than profit or typical cost-benefit analyses. We need a national public transportation system to ensure access to health care and other services, and to reduce the vulnerability of key subpopulations.

Saskatchewan's experience provides a morbid cautionary tale—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Alhassan. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to cut your opening remarks off there.

Next we have Dr. Hanson. The floor is yours. You have five minutes for your introductory remarks.

[Dr. Cindy Hanson, Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Studies, University of Regina, As an Individual]

Thank you for inviting me to present.

I want to start by acknowledging the indigenous territory, Treaty 6 and homeland of the Métis, where I am situated today.

I've been a public transportation user and researcher, and I'm currently residing in Saskatchewan in a community with no access to public transportation since the shuttering of STC. I was asked by this committee to speak about intercity transportation.

I'd like to start by saying it's important that we consider intercity transportation as beyond cities—that is, inter-regional or intercommunity—because if we don't do this, there will be a loss in citizen's voices from people living in rural and remote locations, which is some 20% to 30% of the population, depending on where you live. Transportation systems need to be inclusive and citizen-led.

What do I mean by this?

When public systems are replaced by private ones, citizens are replaced by “consumers”. I'm concerned that a policy focus on urban centres and private transportation speaks to a loss of citizen voices and participation. The absence of a framing policy around all citizens creates a risk that some—i.e. citizens in rural areas, the elderly, indigenous, those with mobility issues, etc.—become second-class citizens.

This is not how Canada was built. Our communities are interconnected. The rural supports the urban and the urban supports the rural. That's how Canada was structured. Therefore, the starting point needs to be more than intercity.

Secondly, in developing transportation policy, Canada needs to consider not only rural and remote and how transportation to and from these areas is structured and sustained, but also how populations are not homogenous.

There are two examples of this. One is the The Highway of Tears in northern British Columbia. It is a location that until recently was not serviced by public transportation and is an area of a high number of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. Another example is citizens with mobility issues.

The Highway of Tears was notorious, particularly for indigenous women hitchhiking, because no bus service existed until recently. As someone now living north of Prince Albert, I'm grossly aware of how northern Saskatchewan is quietly on its way to becoming another highway of tears. Call for justice 4.8 in the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls report as well as calls for safe resource allocation in the TRC report both speak to the need to address these.

The second class of citizens without access to transportation is people with mobility issues, like my friend Terri Sleeva. Terri is in a wheelchair and has not had bus access since the end of STC. Without access, she is part of a “mobility underclass”, and her transportation disadvantage limits her ability to work, to access basic services and to contribute to society. It took Terri two years of fighting a legal case with Transport Canada until she was finally awarded access on a private carrier in Saskatchewan.

Lack of transportation in these examples and more means a lack of safety and a lack of participation in society. Transportation needs to be about more than those who can pay. It has to ensure that we have democratic decision-making, equitable outcomes, opportunities and community benefits. This includes access to health care before, after and during a pandemic.

Mobility shapes how we live our lives. If, for example, citizens in the city have access to subsidies on public transit of up to 60%, why can't the same rights exist for people in rural and remote locations of Canada?

The removal of Greyhound demonstrates that transportation needs to be public and not designed on economics only. Greyhound stopped operating because it was no longer profitable for it to do so. Social, health, environmental and other factors need to be considered in the policy. They can be designed, monitored and evaluated with a public lens to equality, safety and accessibility.

An example of this would be to look at the STC scorecard. When STC was shuttered, the public was told that private industry would take over. That hasn't happened. Only one still operates in Saskatchewan, and only on the routes that are profitable. Although a special interest group might step forward to meet the needs of people in the community, that only creates gaps for people who aren't part of that special needs group.

Mobility rights are human rights. Canada signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but with current barriers to movement, these freedoms cannot be realized.

Finally, I conclude with key recommendations from our study, “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow”. These include further research, community planning on public transportation, mobility with attention to diversity of users and vulnerable groups and looking at factors beyond economic indicators.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Dr. Hanson.

Next we have Mr. Cassidy.

Mr. Cassidy the floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[Michael Cassidy, Owner, Coach Atlantic Maritime Bus]

Thank you.

Intercity busing is a very low-margin, highly capital-intensive industry with many well-documented financial challenges.

In 2012, Orléans Express tells the maritime region that it has to surrender its motor carrier rights due to losing two million dollars a year. In 2014, Orléans tells the Quebec government that it's losing $3.5 million a year risking low-revenue routes in the province of Quebec. In 2018, Greyhound pulls out of what they call the unprofitable west. In 2020-2021, COVID did its best to halt this industry. In 2021, Greyhound ceases operations in Canada and sells their U.S.A. operations. Yes, this industry needs a model.

We have been petitioning for a model for the past four years. We have presented this model to standing committees, round tables, rural caucus, Atlantic caucus, government officials and policy advisers, and we met with our Minister of Transport when he was in Halifax in March of this year. It is a model that is based on the following.

It has to be collaborative with nothing to do with jurisdiction.

Rural-urban connectivity has to be a priority. We have to acknowledge that public transit on provincial highways is no different from public transit on municipal streets.

Ticket pricing must be affordable and service must be accessible. We have to acknowledge that for-profit carriers have been the backbone of this industry.

The ask in this business model going forward is very straightforward: For the next generation of infrastructure funding, we are suggesting that intercity busing should be identified as an eligible project, and for-profit carriers should be identified as eligible recipients in future capital infrastructure funding.

Collaboration versus jurisdiction is very important. When you try to present this model, you have to make sure that the provinces are onside. This year in April, we wrote the three maritime provinces. We thanked them for their support for Maritime Bus during COVID but, more importantly, we said that a capital infrastructure program helps lower the acquisition costs of buses. It would help cash flow, creating a sustainable operating model and alleviating many potential requests for annual operating subsidies.

We gave them an example: If 25 buses for a line run between cities were purchased for the maritime provinces with a cost-sharing of $8 million from a federal program, $6 million, or 30%, from the provinces of the Maritimes and 30% from Maritime Bus, or $6 million, at $8-million, $6-million and $6-million contributions, there would be new buses fully accessible within our maritime region.

I am very pleased to make mention here this evening that the three maritime provinces, with Newfoundland and Labrador joining them in July of this year, wrote to the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Infrastructure to suggest that they can confirm that we are interested in reviewing any merit-based applications for the support of intercity buses. The four provinces said it was an important service that provides considerable value to Atlantic Canadians. Our hope is that our region's intercity busing will continue to operate.

In closing, we have intercity buses identified as a very valuable and a very important service. We have a solution. We have collaboration. Now we need policy changes.

People ask us at Maritime Bus, “Why do you do it?”

We answer, "It's the right thing to do.”

I hope, going forward, that this committee agrees it is the right thing to do.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Cassidy.

Next we have Mr. Gemmel.

Mr. Gemmel, the floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[Matt Gemmel, Director, Policy and Research, Federation of Canadian Municipalities]

Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good evening to all of the members of the standing committee.

I'm calling in today from FCM's offices in the city of Ottawa. As FCM moves forward with our commitment to reconciliation, we acknowledge that our head offices are located on the unceded unsurrendered territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin nation, whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial.

I'm very pleased to be here on behalf of FCM's more than 2,000-member municipal governments from coast to coast to coast. Intercommunity passenger bus service is a critical issue for municipalities in all regions of the country, and so I want to start by thanking the committee for choosing to study this important topic.

There is no doubt that providing reliable, affordable and effective passenger bus service in a nation as vast as ours is a challenge, and we've heard that already tonight. The loss of Greyhound routes was a terrible blow for Canadians in rural regions, particularly those in areas where transportation options were already limited. It follows similar announcements over the past decade impacting Acadian Bus Lines and, as we already heard tonight, the STC—Saskatchewan Transportation Company—on the Prairies.

This marks a concerning trend. We're not going in the right direction. These challenges aren't new, and yet we still lack a coordinated approach to passenger bus service in this country. FCM's sincere hope is that this study is a catalyst for concrete action by the federal government in partnership with provinces, territories, municipalities and indigenous governments.

As the committee has already heard in the course of its study, passenger bus service is a critical element of an equitable and sustainable national transportation system. It's not only vital for economic development—especially in a rural context—but it's also a key contributor to public safety and community well-being. There's a direct link between the lack of affordable and safe transportation options in certain regions and violence against indigenous women, girls and the two-spirit and LGBTQ+ communities. As we've already heard tonight, the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls recommended improved rural and remote transportation options for exactly this reason.

Intercity bus services are also essential to achieving a zero-emission transport system.

Across the country, emissions from the transportation sector are on the rise. Municipalities and the federal government have chosen to invest in urban public transport as a priority. This partnership enables cities and communities to develop transportation networks that will enable these communities to become carbon neutral by 2050.

As we look at greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector, we must not forget intercommunity travel. Canadians need affordable public transit options, be those bus or train, between communities to reduce the number of single-passenger vehicles on our highways even as we shift to electric vehicles and low-carbon fuels.

For municipal leaders, the question of how to move Canadians safely and reliably between communities has only grown in urgency. At our 2021 annual conference, shortly after the announcement that Greyhound would be reducing service in the Canadian market, municipal delegates voted to adopt a resolution calling for urgent federal support for intercommunity passenger bus service.

The resolution calls on the federal government to take leadership on this issue by identifying a lead federal department—most likely Transport Canada—and working with the provinces and territories to develop and implement a long-term funding model for passenger bus services for all regions of the country.

The federal government's mandate set out in the Canada Transportation Act is to contribute to the development of a competitive, economical and efficient national transportation system, and it's in that spirit that FCM's members adopted the resolution last year. The federal government has a critical role to play in terms of coordinating and funding this essential public service.

One of the key messages that I want to leave with you today—and that I'm hoping we can discuss more in the Q and A—is that we aren't starting here from scratch. We have some of the elements of a comprehensive national system already in place, and we've heard about some of that already tonight. There are regions of the country that are covered by passenger rail, and the federal government is rightly looking to expand and improve rail service in the Toronto-Quebec City corridor. Over time, passenger rail service could be added elsewhere in the country as well, starting with existing underutilized short-line infrastructure.

We have a long history in this country of publicly run or publicly subsidized passenger bus companies at the provincial and regional level. We've heard some examples of those tonight. As the committee heard last week, we're seeing more private and non-profit carriers entering the market since Greyhound's departure—on certain routes and in certain regions of the country—and these can be supported to expand further.

Lastly, the federal government already has funding programs for public transit in place, notably the rural transit solutions fund that was announced in 2021. There's a very strong existing federal-municipal partnership on public transit, and we can build on that. I would be happy to speak more about that during the Q and A.

FCM is calling on the federal government to build on these existing elements and work with provincial, territorial, municipal and indigenous governments to create a national approach that includes a sustainable funding model in partnership with provinces and territories. Such a plan should be developed in consultation with municipalities to ensure it reflects local realities as much as possible. The federal government should work to ensure that any strategy to address gaps in service avoids a one-size-fits-all approach.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gemmel. Unfortunately, there's no time remaining.

Next and finally for introductory remarks, we have Mr. Wabinski.

The floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[Kasper Wabinski, President, Kasper Transportation]

Hello, everyone.

We are based in Thunder Bay, Ontario. We operate scheduled routes from Winnipeg to the west, Sioux Lookout and Longlac to the north, and as far east as White River.

We operate 16 buses on four daily routes, delivering parcels and providing critical essential charter services and scheduled service.

To give a perspective of—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I'm sorry, Mr. Wabinski. We're going to do a sound check here. You're coming in quite light. We want to make sure that all members, including our translators, can hear you.

If you can get your mike closer to your mouth, please, that might be helpful. We will give that a try.

[Kasper Wabinski]

How about this? Is that better?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

All right, Mr. Wabinski. We will troubleshoot here.

We're going to suspend the meeting for two minutes, Mr. Wabinski, so the sound technicians here can call you and work out the issue. We just want to make sure that all of the translators can hear you and that the members can hear your testimony.

The meeting will be suspended for two minutes. I ask for the patience of all witnesses joining us by video conference. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I call this meeting back to order.

Mr. Wabinski, would you please restart your remarks? Thank you very much for your patience.

The floor is yours.

[Kasper Wabinski]

Thank you for that.

Hello, everyone.

We are based in Thunder Bay, Ontario. We operate scheduled routes from Winnipeg to the west, Sioux Lookout and Longlac to the north, and as far east as White River. We operate 16 buses on four daily routes, delivering parcels, providing critical essential charters and, most importantly, scheduled services. To give a perspective of the area we serve, we travel 4,000 to 5,000 kilometres per day.

I will make a strong opening statement. Today's intercity bus network is a national embarrassment. The biggest problem with intercity busing in our country is that we have a handful of operators that service limited regions of the country in an inconsistent, localized approach. Half of the provinces have proven over and over again that they have little interest in this file. There's no leadership, and furthermore, Ontario has a major conflict of interest, with potential concerns for violations of the federal Competition Act.

Today, operators are acting of their own accord, doing what is best for their companies. That is the result of eliminating provincial highway transportation boards, and it stands as proof of provincial priorities. Without a vision, a plan and guidance, we will never see a coherent trans-Canada bus route. We cannot ever allow again one company to hold our country hostage by monopolizing Canada, as a few entrants are working towards doing. It needs to be a coalition of like-minded operators working to achieve a federal vision. Far too often intercity busing is used by our provinces as a political bargaining chip. Besides the maritime provinces, there is little to no private-provincial co-operation in achieving a form of sustainable busing.

Today, many of us plan or compete for market share in busy corridors like Toronto to Ottawa. Open markets focus financial resources on the big busy centres where there is volume and more money to be made. That approach does not work in the intercity bus sector.

I ask the committee members to review the Coast to Coast Bus Coalition proposal. We signed a pledge to interline together nationally and work together with the federal government in creating a sustainable national bus network. We outline an industry-driven private-public solution.

I believe we need a national highway intercity transportation board and a national essential bus transportation act to lead us into the future. I believe that the federal government is responsible for connecting Canada by bus, and in my view, that should be one of the key mandates of Infrastructure Canada. The federal government can and should include private coach operators in transit and rural transit funding. There's no reason that private operators like us should be excluded from the fund while municipalities can apply. The rural transit stream is not meant to solve the intercity rural transportation issues in its current form. This is because in area like northern Ontario, small townships and municipalities either don't have the capacity or don't make it a priority to improve transportation between them, and if the province doesn't take leadership, the entire region is left with inadequate services and disconnected from the rest of Canada.

The federal government can introduce subsidies for private motorcoach operators to help support the cross-provincial development of routes. For example, the U.S. government's essential air service program gave $350 million largely to the smallest airlines in 2021 in the lower 48 states serving remote cities. Why not have a similar essential bus service program working on a similar concept, but geared towards intercity busing? The federal government can use direct funding to fund private motorcoach operators like tax incentives, tax rebates on fuel or more direct project grants to correct various connectivity shortcomings.

We are the most basic backbone of our intercity infrastructure. Where there is political will, solutions will be implemented. Intercity busing crosses provincial boundaries, and that should make it a federal matter, just like trains, airplanes and ships.

Only federal oversight and a federal plan will reconnect Canada. I ask our government to take responsibility for the transportation file and make it a federal mandate again.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Wabinski.

To begin our line of questioning today, we have Mr. Lewis.

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

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses this evening. I certainly appreciate your testimony.

I have quite a few questions, but I would start by saying, in fairness to the witnesses, that my riding of Essex is down by Windsor, next to the busiest international border crossing in North America.

I suppose, to start off, Mr. Chair, this study could have simply been called “intercity transport by bus in Canada and the United States”, because for an area like Windsor, there's a lot of cross-border travel. Doctors and nurses go across on our transport system. I realize that's not what the study is studying, but I had to bring that up, because even for something as silly as a football game.... The Detroit Lions, by the way, just lost their last one, but won three in a row.

There's something called the Tunnel Bus, or the “special bus”, that many of our patrons jumped on to go to a Detroit Lions game, a Red Wings game or a Detroit Tigers game. After two and a half years of COVID, it just opened up in the middle of November. It truly affects people's lives.

First and foremost, Mr. Cassidy, from Coach Atlantic Maritime Bus, I really respect you, sir, especially for the fact that you said that although the industry is really tough, it's the right thing to do. Those are some pretty powerful words in the face of an industry that's, quite frankly, been relatively walked past.

Mr. Cassidy, this is to you first, sir, and then I'll be following up with the same question to Mr. Wabinski. Would it be fair to say that a lot of the struggles are due to the labour shortages? It's not only our drivers, but our mechanics.

Mr. Cassidy, this it to you first, please, sir.

[Michael Cassidy]

Thank you, Mr. Lewis.

Definitely not. There has never been a shortage during the history we've been involved with in the line run or intercity busing. Tomorrow we celebrate our 10th anniversary here in the Maritimes after Orléans surrendered their motor carrier rights in 2012, and our challenges have never been mechanics and/or drivers.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, sir.

Go ahead, Mr. Wabinski, sir.

[Kasper Wabinski]

I would echo what Michael Cassidy has said. I agree with that statement for us as well.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

That's mind-boggling, because you're probably the only folks I've met with in the last year and a half who are not screaming for labour. In my capacity as shadow minister for labour, that's good news. We always need a good-news story.

Through you, Mr. Chair, to Ms. Hanson, you spoke about private versus public transportation. The message is received. However, our public transit system, going back to the example of Windsor-Detroit, in that it was shut down....

Could you expand a bit on that? If I understood you correctly, what you said was that if we don't keep it public, we're in trouble on the private side.

Could you please expand somewhat on that?

[Dr. Cindy Hanson]

Sure.

I think there are lots of directions where that can go, but let me start by saying that the motive of private carriers is profit. If the route is not profitable, why would they continue having services on that route?

A case in point to this is in Saskatchewan, where the government said private carriers would take over when STC was shuttered. Out of, I believe, 10 private companies that came forward, there's one that still exists, and it operates in three cities in the province, because that's where it's profitable.

We have to start looking at public transportation as beyond the economic indicators of profitability on routes. We need to look at it.... There are so many other ways it could be profitable. I think Kasper alluded to charter services and those kinds of things.

There's also what's called a social audit. This is where I think the federal government needs to do more study. We need to know the actual costs of operating or having areas of provinces that are not being serviced by buses. What is the actual cost in missed medical appointments and in people being unable to access, for example, vaccines—if that's their choice—for COVID?

It limits what people can do. In the case of mobility and with my example of Terri being unable to be a citizen in Canada because she had no mobility, it took Transport Canada two years to resolve her issue, when in fact the CEO of the Canadian Transportation Agency said in a study—

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Finish up very quickly, please, Ms. Hanson.

[Dr. Cindy Hanson]

It said, “Accessibility is a fundamental human right and we are committed to ensuring that this right is realized in practice.” A successful transportation—

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you.

I'm sorry, Ma'am. I have only 30 seconds left.

Very quickly through you, Mr. Chair, to Mr. Gemmel with the FCM, I am a little bit concerned about tourism. We're just starting to get going here again and we have to talk about tourism.

I have only about 10 seconds. Can you tell me what FCM's thoughts and feelings are and what can we do to enhance our tourism sector?