Transport Committee on Nov. 30th, 2022

[Matt Gemmel]

Thanks, Mr. Bachrach. It's great to get a question from a former mayor.

I would say that from FCM's perspective, that conversation is not advancing very quickly.

We're very encouraged that this committee is studying the issue, but aside from this committee's study, we're not seeing signs of progress on this file. We're not seeing the same kind of interest from the federal government in intercommunity passenger bus service that we are on urban public transit.

To sort of echo remarks earlier from Mr. Cassidy, and just to underline remarks I made in my opening presentation, we have an excellent partner in the federal government on urban public transport. We've had significant support for capital for purchasing buses and other investments in infrastructure for public transit from successive governments, from the previous Conservative government and, since 2015, with the current government.

Importantly, just in the last couple of years, we've seen the creation of a new fund, the rural transit solutions fund, that's expanding that partnership beyond cities to smaller communities, but, as has been noted, that fund is designed and scoped to support transit within a small town or on a regional basis to connect a rural region to that town. That is critically important and something that FCM absolutely supports, but it's not—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gemmel, and thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Mr. Martel, you now have the floor for six minutes.

[Richard Martel, Conservative, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for attending.

Mr. Alhassan, you said that some regions are underserved. What are those areas, specifically?

[Dr. Jacob Alhassan]

For the most part, we can think of it in a geographical sense and we can also think of it in terms of communities of people. Geographically, we're talking about rural areas that have smaller populations; these are areas that often end up being neglected. I think the other groups of people that we can think about who often get excluded and are under-serviced would be people with disabilities, indigenous communities and other people living in vulnerability. They often lose out because there are not enough people to board the buses on those routes, if they are private, and so the private bus provider may decide to simply pull out of such areas.

[Richard Martel, Conservative, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

As a matter of curiosity, are the roads adequate or would new infrastructure be required?

Mr. Alhassan, you said that rural areas, people with disabilities, and indigenous people are underserved.

What I am looking for is whether the roads are adequate for a private transportation system, if there was one.

[Dr. Jacob Alhassan]

That's a good question.

I think it's difficult to respond comprehensively, although I would say, in the case of a place like Saskatchewan, there was a well-established system for travelling through the bus system, so if, for example, there was a desire to create a public bus system that would come to, say, Saskatchewan, there would be an existing infrastructure, by and large. However, there might be areas in other parts of the country where they have lost public transportation options for a much longer period. For such areas, much more infrastructure investment would be needed to kick-start and restart things in some of those areas that have been underserved for much longer.

[Richard Martel, Conservative, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Alhassan.

I will now address Mr. Wabinski.

In 2018, Greyhound Canada announced the significant reduction of several routes, particularly in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. The company still maintained its routes in Ontario and Quebec. However, the famous COVID‑19 pandemic hit, and we could no longer travel. This put a damper on the national economy and dealt a big blow to Greyhound Canada, which decided to stop offering its services in Quebec and Ontario, the two remaining provinces. One of the reasons cited by the carrier was a 41% drop in passengers nationwide since 2010.

As the president of a motor coach company similar to Greyhound Canada, have you seen a significant decline in passengers since 2010?

[Kasper Wabinski]

Actually, I would like to say that our ridership has gone up since we entered the market. We entered the market in 2015. I think it's critical for a bus company to provide the kind of service that people want and I think there's a misconception that buses are only for low-income people. There's 90% of the country that could be a bus customer, and they're not. It's a matter of subsidies for people who can't afford it, and they are an easy solution to that problem.

Ridership can actually go up and up from where it is if we give people what they want and they want a safe, comfortable trip and they want the experience. They want a kind of new Uber experience; they don't want to be cramped in on buses with uncomfortable seats. Our company has been working towards meeting those objectives, and we've been noticing that our ridership went significantly up since 2015 to 2020. When COVID-19 came, obviously, we were down 90%, but we're back to 90% pre-COVID-19 revenue right now. Ridership is still down because the cost of travel has gone up, and not everybody has gone back to the old way of doing things. A lot of people still travel less than before, but we see that upward trend continuing over the next five years.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Martel.

Next we have Ms. Koutrakis.

The floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for your very valuable testimony this afternoon. This is a very important study, and I'm very pleased that my colleagues and I agreed to have this on the record.

I'd like to start with Dr. Hanson.

You mentioned “social audit” in your testimony. I'd like to know a little bit more about that. What kind of data is missing for evaluating the socio-economic impacts of declining intercity bus travel? What don't we know and what should we know?

[Dr. Cindy Hanson]

When STC was shuttered in the province of Saskatchewan, one thing that we continually asked the auditor to do was to provide a social audit, because the government said it was done on cost. We wanted to know what the actual cost was.

The social audit would include things like people missing medical appointments. The transportation of blood products in Saskatchewan was done by the provincial bus company, STC. Blood was transported safely from one location to another. That is now being done by taxi. You can imagine the increased cost on the private sector when these public goods are taken away. The library books were all shipped by the public bus system. Those interlibrary loans are now done by private courier.

When you put these public items into the private sector, the costs actually increase. All of that would be shown in a social audit.

You had a first question.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

What are the socio-economic impacts of declining intercity bus travel?

[Dr. Cindy Hanson]

Those are some of them.

Of course, another one is something like people not having access to get out of a situation. For example, some of the drivers told us about picking up people who are fleeing situations of abuse in their home communities. They can no longer exit those communities because they don't have a safe way out.

Public buses provide a way out of various situations that make people vulnerable. The Highway of Tears is an example of that.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

That's a great segue, because my next question to you was if you could elaborate for us on the gendered effects of declining intercity bus travel.

[Dr. Cindy Hanson]

What STC actually found—I'm using them as an example because they had really good statistics, which we need more of in Canada in terms of the bus systems—was that of the people who rode buses, 60% were women and 71% were vulnerable populations.

First of all, when we look at that stat, we see that the majority of bus users in the province were women. You also have to look at aging populations. Women tend to live longer. Seniors are generally more dangerous drivers. I don't mean that in a bad way. As an aging woman, I can say that. Public buses are, as Jacob alluded to in the beginning of his talk about OECD, in general, safer modes of transportation. They're also less polluting. There's a whole bunch of reasons there.

Those are some of the gendered effects. However, the Canadian government really needs to do a GBA+ analysis of the impacts of having public and private transportation in Canada and what the best system would be for an intercommunity approach.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Besides Greyhound now leaving this vacancy and other private operators hopefully stepping in, I'm also interested to learn what some of the other primary factors are that we have been seeing in the declining intercity bus travel. Are there other factors besides just private operators shutting down?

[Dr. Cindy Hanson]

Some of the other factors would be people having access to loved ones. Another factor in the province of Saskatchewan is where you have a mother and father living in different communities. Through social services, children are now being put in taxis with social workers. You look at the time social workers spend with people, plus the use of private carriers.

Those would be some of the impacts. People can't get from one province to the other because there aren't always bus systems that exist interprovincially. There are access to specialists and health costs, etc.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. Koutrakis.

Mr. Barsalou‑Duval, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I listened carefully to, among other things, what Ms. Hanson and Mr. Alhassan had to say, and they seem to be making a strong case for a Canadian bus system run by a Crown corporation-like company, if I understand their vision correctly.

For my part, I still have some questions. At this time, there are other concerns with regard to transport. Having said that, you should know that I am strongly in favour of public transport. It makes a big difference for students, for example, as well as for retired people or anyone who wants to get from one place to another without using a car.

We should talk about the federal government's jurisdiction. For example, we did studies on the issue of inter-regional air travel and we found that it was very difficult to make it profitable and that very little service was in place. There was a problem there that would need to be addressed.

We should also talk about transport by train. For example, there is the famous Via Rail Canada high frequency train project that would serve several cities. It may not be a Via Rail project anymore; today, we don't know. I think we've been talking about it for more than three elections and it hasn't come to fruition yet.

I would like to hear your views in the context of the federal government already having significant responsibilities for transportation. The government has made announcements of projects for intercity and inter-regional transportation within its jurisdiction, but these have not materialized and are not moving forward very quickly.

Why would we create another project when it is hard to see what it would look like and who would do it? Wouldn't this duplicate services that already exist and create bickering over jurisdiction?

Does the Federation of Canadian Municipalities representative have a comment on this?

[Matt Gemmel]

Thank you.

I can try to answer that question. Our view is that there is a role for the federal government. I think this is an area of shared jurisdiction. That is the way we would describe it.

I would draw the parallel again to public transit in an urban context. There, you have a clear jurisdiction for municipal governments, but public transit systems are funded by provincial governments and by the federal government. They're increasingly funded by the federal government. As I noted, we have a very strong partner in the federal government when it comes to urban public transit. I don't see any reason—and other witnesses have suggested there's no reason—that the federal government couldn't play a bigger role going forward.

To the points around the diversity of the regional needs in this country, there's a role for the federal government around coordination. There are many different models that could be adopted to implement a national transportation system, and the federal government is best placed to play that coordination role.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gemmel.

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou‑Duval.

Next we have Mr. Bachrach. The floor is yours. You have two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

On the topic of jurisdiction, I had this conversation with our current transport minister. He said very clearly that in his view, buses are provincial jurisdiction. The federal government is willing to help, but the provinces need to show the leadership.

Dr. Hanson, I'm wondering what your reaction is to that kind of statement.

[Dr. Cindy Hanson]

The situation in Canada is that we have some provinces that think they have the lead on a lot of issues. However, I think in the case of a national transportation system, if we look at it not just from the perspective of buses but as a centralized network and a transportation system, it can help build something that is national. From that, there can be networks and other systems that take place interprovincially.

Part of that is thinking outside of the box. It's also about looking at what happens when we don't have those systems and the vulnerabilities of places and people within communities that don't have access to public transportation.

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

I'm going to try rapid-fire questions for my remaining seconds, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Wabinski, where should we be looking for leadership in order to achieve the vision that everyone's talking about nationally? Who needs to lead?

[Kasper Wabinski]

We should create a national highway transportation department, a board that would be dedicated towards managing buses. I don't believe provinces will ever come to terms, so it has to be the feds, and the only way to do this in a timely manner across the nation is to centralize this right in the federal government, maybe in the infrastructure ministry or Transport Canada. That's my belief and understanding over the last three years.