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.