Evidence of meeting #55 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
We'll continue with our lines of questioning, and we'll turn it over to Mr. Strahl for six minutes.
The floor is yours.
Conservative
Mark Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Hope, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
My question is for Dr. Breen.
We heard previous testimony from witnesses who indicated there was a need for the sharing of data between modes of transport but also between carriers. They suggested that this should be done through a non-profit clearing house type of entity. Have you done any work on that and do you have any comments? It is one of the recommendations that might come out of this report, and I'm just wondering if you have done any work there.
We talked about how if you were booking a holiday, you would use Expedia, Travelocity or something like that, but the fees there are much too high for many of these smaller companies. Have you done any work or do you have any thoughts on the need for a sort of government-supported clearing house for information sharing?
Regional Innovation Chair, Rural Economic Development, Selkirk College, As an Individual
One of the groupings of innovations we noticed when we were doing our work was about the importance of software for everything that previous speakers have mentioned, like tracking who is getting on, where they are getting off and those types of things.
I'm not a software expert, but from a technical perspective, setting up data sharing or linking data sharing between different systems is not technically challenging. It's not that there's a specific software. It is technically possible.
The challenge is in data-sharing agreements, particularly when it comes to for-profit companies not wanting to divulge things that they feel may interfere with their profits. It is really important for multimodal transit and to link all of those different systems that they talk to each other. It's not technically challenging; it is getting data-sharing agreements in place and making people play nice, for lack of a better way to say that.
Conservative
Mark Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Hope, BC
As Mr. Bachrach said earlier, when you no longer have a single carrier that operates coast to coast, there might be a way to string together a few tickets to get from one destination to another. However, if there's no coordination and if someone doesn't have the technical expertise or the time or resources to develop that themselves, it seems like this would be a good intervention for an entity to take on if they were empowered to do so.
I heard a bit about operating funding versus capital funding. I think the challenge for government is that there is a certain amount of money available. Money is finite. In the last number of years, perhaps that belief has been suspended. I hear about the lack of resources for busing, but then I look at what is being done for Via Rail. We're talking about a multi-billion dollar expansion that's been referenced for dedicated high-frequency rail track. The subsidy for riders between Windsor and Quebec was $80 per rider prior to the pandemic and $180 during the pandemic. From Jasper to Prince Rupert, it was $483 per passenger, and that was up to almost $1,500 when ridership was down. Clearly the Government of Canada is willing to subsidize certain travellers on certain routes using certain modes.
How do you think the Government of Canada should prioritize that? It seems to me that if we're talking about safety, giving people a hand up and perhaps giving them a service they otherwise wouldn't have, subsidizing intercity busing or intercommunity busing might be fairer than subsidizing those who are at least middle-class people taking the train. I'd ask for your comments on that too.
We're talking about fairness. How is it fair that a rail passenger in a highly populated area from Windsor to Quebec City gets a huge subsidy while people often put in danger by travelling are getting nothing?
Regional Innovation Chair, Rural Economic Development, Selkirk College, As an Individual
I'll answer the best I can, and perhaps one of my colleagues can jump in, because I don't have a great deal of knowledge on the rail system.
In terms of cost, we did a project recently called “Building the Future” in Ontario and other provinces. A quote that stuck with me from one of the local government folks was that they would rather have no money predictably than the scattergun randomness that they're often left to deal with in response to random calls for funding. It becomes very difficult to work in a system of unpredictability.
There's a need for predictability and stability particularly around transit. This is one of the reasons we see the intercommunity regional transit in British Columbia being more successful. It is because of the provincial entity B.C. Transit, which works with local governments and creates local, regional systems.
Is it perfect? No. Does it handle those long-distance things or cross-province things? Absolutely not. However, it does provide operational funding and predictability and stability for those communities.
Conservative
Conservative
Mark Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Hope, BC
I will ask Dr. Breen about the Highway 16 B.C. Transit improvement, and whether that's an example of how.... Obviously, it was born out of tragedy. They worked with communities, community groups, etc. Perhaps give us a brief comment on the work that's been done there and whether that's a model other communities can follow.
Regional Innovation Chair, Rural Economic Development, Selkirk College, As an Individual
While I know of the pilot and how it was structured, I'm afraid that I haven't seen any information on its impact. I don't know whether others have. I would be interested to know the answer. I won't pretend I know it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, Mr. Strahl and Dr. Breen.
We're going to turn it over to Mr. Badawey.
Mr. Badawey, the floor is yours. You have five minutes.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to concentrate my questions on Ms. Petrunic.
I like the road—no pun intended—that Mr. Barsalou-Duval and, to some extent, Mr. Bachrach were travelling down.
I'll preface my comments by saying this. It's 2023. To some extent, our entire transportation system can be looked at as being somewhat archaic. I have to say this to members of the committee: This is not unlike what this committee is studying with respect to the integration of moving trade within our binational and international supply chains. We've been talking about integrating the distribution and logistics of trade; now we're talking about integrating the distribution and logistics of people.
I'll say this to the witnesses. It's not what we say or ask that makes it onto the record. It's your answer or testimony that's put onto the record. Therefore, it's very important to get what you're saying onto the record and have the minister respond to that very testimony.
Ms. Petrunic, we know the “what” in terms of the needs. It's just a matter of getting to the “how”. I have two questions, and then I'm going to let you have the floor for the rest of my time.
Do you think a multimodal people-mover study would be more appropriate for this committee to pursue versus simply a bus study?
As to my second question, which is in line with that, what about data, the digital side, central booking and sustainable, leveraged funding to offset capital? This in turn offsets operational...on the need to finance any capital debt. I want to throw that on the floor.
Ms. Petrunic, the floor is yours to answer that.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium
Thank you very much, Chair. I appreciate the dual questions of the member.
I'll answer the first one: Is a multimodal study more appropriate than a bus study? Yes, absolutely. The reason is that this study has to merge with a strategy, and the strategy has to be very clear on the questions previously asked: Who do we want to move, how many Canadians do we want to move, where do we want to move them, at what cost and how fast?
That's it. We have to answer those questions, and we won't be able to answer them and say we want to move all Canadians everywhere all the time at any cost. The answer has to be that we want to move some Canadians from some places at some times, at a certain cost and at a certain speed, because there are finite resources out there.
Layering on top of that, obviously, are the issues that have been raised by my colleagues of who the most vulnerable are and who the most in need are. They should drive the answers to those questions, but those questions have to be answered. If we leave it ambiguous and omnibus, we will continue to have a 19th century transportation system heading into the 22nd century.
That's the first answer: It should be multimodal. The assumption underlying this is that both public and private providers have a role to play there, because there is money to be made on all sides of that equation with the clientele we have. The clientele we have is 36 million or 37 million Canadians, at last head count, plus a few hundred thousand immigrants every year.
That's our clientele, and it's structured in about five large cities in this country, with a smattering of smaller rural communities that are not connected today. That's the marketplace we're dealing with, so we need those answers. Who do we want to move? How many Canadians? Where and at what cost, and how fast between those marketplaces? These are the logistics of passengers and clientele movement issues. It is no different from the freight matter that you referred to. It is about moving people in the limited capacity of the system that we have today and incrementally growing it.
Therefore, I would say, as a second component to the first question about a multimodal study, that it is insufficient for the multimodal study to be a national strategy only. It does have to be a CUSMA study, for the same reason that when we talk about electrification and the use of hydrogen, it's not enough for CP and CN to find some hydrogen on either side of the country. They need a North American solution. Moving Canadians east to west and north to south does include integrating Canadians with the hubs in Seattle and New York and across the North American barrier, so this study has to have some integration capacity, at least in the big centres of Vancouver and Toronto.
That's the answer to the first question. Within that, of course, are the private providers of not only coaching and shuttle services but also the on-demand services.
The answer to the second question on the data is twofold.
Number one, identify the clientele. As a case study, it was only a couple of years ago that Via Rail started identifying your profile. Air Canada has known all about you for years. Aeroplan has known all about you. Air Miles knows all about you. Via only just started to know about you.
Anybody who has run a business knows that you need to know your customers. We don't know anything about our customers, and that's not just Via. Public transit collects almost no data about its customers and clientele. How do we treat customers, therefore? Like a kick in the pants, because they're not treated as customers; they're treated as obligatory servants of a welfare system. That is no good and cannot proceed forward.
The first issue of data is to identify the clientele so that we know what the clientele wants. Where are they going? Who are they? What are their demographics? What is their profile from an income perspective? That data can be incorporated into this study, because data can be collected at every point of contact: the app that I download, the ticket I buy, the ride I take. I can consent to handing over my data in exchange for a better service. That has to happen across those multi-modes.
The second side of it is very business oriented. Whether it's publicly subsidized or not, those data allow for performance measures. They allow us to identify how many people are moving, how far, how fast and at what cost, and whether the service we are subsidizing is performing at the measures we expect it to perform at.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, Dr. Petrunic. We very much appreciate your responses.
Thank you very much, Mr. Badawey.
Liberal
Bloc
Xavier Barsalou-Duval Bloc Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This is for Ms. Petrunic as well. She's quite popular today.
This is something we haven't talked about yet, but I wish it had come up, even though everything else we've discussed has been especially interesting. I'm referring to the electrification of bus transportation. I know it's something you've researched. I'd like to hear your views, because it's an area I haven't been able to get much information on during our study.
Given today's technology, what's the range an electric bus could feasibly have?
In the middle term, what can we expect to see in the market?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium
There's the Ph.D. answer, which we don't have time for, and then there's the Coles Notes answer. The Coles Notes answer is that the range depends on the size of battery and the platform. However, in typical form, if you have a regular city bus that's 40 feet—that's your normal city bus—and you have about a 400-kilowatt-hour battery pack, you can get more or you can get less. Generally in the spring and summer, in good weather conditions, you're going to get about 300 kilometres out of that thing—250 to 300 kilometres off of a 400-kilowatt-hour battery pack. In the winter, it's going to be under 200, so your range is cut in half.
Put that battery pack on a coach bus and it's even less. You have to take a lot of space for luggage on a coach bus, and the dynamics of a coach bus are that you can't put all of the battery at the top because it will tip over.
Unfortunately, it's not the same amount of range, and that is why the solution for electrified coaching and electrified transit necessarily has to include high-power charging systems at locations on the route, in the middle of the city or, if you're Metrolinx, at GO stations. This is going to require regional integration and planning across municipalities, regions and provinces. That's what's coming up.
Bloc
Xavier Barsalou-Duval Bloc Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC
If I understand correctly, it's reasonable to think that an electric bus could cover a distance of 150 to 200 kilometres between two stops, say. The bus could even stop there and resume service a little later, considering that the charging technology is increasingly efficient, if I'm not mistaken.
Can you talk about the charging element? It's something that's quite promising.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium
The first component is correct. It is possible to increase the range of the electrified system overall, whether it's buses or coaches—or rail, for that matter—by adding more charging capacity, so you're pulling in to a stop, topping up and then continuing along your route.
To the second part of your question, it's not so much about chargers becoming more efficient. These are really high-power charging systems, at 450 kilowatts or 600 kilowatts. They pump out a lot of electrons at a very high power level. They're pretty efficient. The problem is the absorption on the bus. It's the powertrain, the battery and the software being able to absorb the power at that level. If you're basically blasting the powertrain with a ton of energy, you're going to blow the battery; you're going to degrade it.
The issue so far has been the absorption rate, and that slows it right down. We can put high-power chargers everywhere.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you once again, Dr. Petrunic. I know you could go on, and we actually very much enjoy hearing you speak.
I know Mr. Bachrach is going to have questions for Mr. McKay. Before I turn it over to Mr. Bachrach, I'd like to give Mr. McKay an opportunity to provide opening remarks or an opening presentation for five minutes.
Mr. McKay, it's totally up to you—no pressure. I know we're kind of putting you on the spot here, but if you're willing to do it, we'd very much like to hear it.
Chief Executive Officer, Northern Development Initiative Trust
Yes, absolutely. Thank you for that.
Can you hear me okay?
Liberal
Chief Executive Officer, Northern Development Initiative Trust
Good morning, everybody.
I'm sorry for my tardiness. I informed the staff ahead of time that I had drop-off duty for my daughters this morning. That's why I was delayed.
My name is Joel McKay. I'm the chief executive officer of the Northern Development Initiative Trust. We're a regional economic development organization that serves northern British Columbia, an area about the size of France, to give you a sense of our magnitude. We have about half a billion dollars in assets.
A year and a half ago, we took on responsibility, in partnership with the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure here in British Columbia and with B.C. Transit, for B.C. Bus North and intercity transportation for the area of British Columbia that is described as northern B.C., which is the Fraser Canyon and north to the Yukon border. In that time, with $7.5 million, which is not much money, we have been able to create an integrated transportation network that includes 18 intercity transportation services, both long haul and intercity short haul—so distances of between 100 kilometres and 200 kilometres—serving both indigenous and non-indigenous communities. We have been able to add routes throughout that entire service area, reduce costs and keep the fare cost in line with inflation.
This year we are launching a new project, which will be a first in Canada, called the connected network. The connected network is a project that will create for the first time a technology that allows the traveller to transfer among all of these services using their mobile device or a phone-in service without any issue.
Right now in northern British Columbia and, frankly, anywhere in Canada, you have to act as your own travel agent. That is difficult when there are a number of different transportation services that are run by different non-profits or for-profits. We see this as a key barrier. We have adopted a technology that has already been deployed in western Europe in a far more complex transportation environment than the one in Canada, and we are going to pilot it and integrate these services here beginning this summer.
In short, our focus—and the reason we're involved in this—is that we see ground transportation as critical to serving the economy in northern British Columbia, which is our mandate. We take a community economic development approach to that. In 18 months, we have been able to significantly expand ground transportation services in northern B.C., integrate them, add new routes and actually reduce costs, and we will very shortly be launching a new technology.
I hope that provides an overview of what our involvement is here.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, Mr. McKay.
I have requests from some members that you pass that information along to us if you could. It would be great to have that on hand.
Mr. Bachrach, I will turn it over to you for your line of questioning. You have two and a half minutes.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. McKay. I really wanted the committee to hear your testimony, especially because I think northern British Columbia is unique in all of Canada in terms of the evolution of intercommunity transportation. I really appreciate the role the trust has played and you as CEO have played in trying to integrate what has become a bit of a patchwork of services that have evolved over time. Obviously this goes back well over a decade, and a lot of it was driven by the concerns about the tragic history of our highway through the region.
You spoke a bit about where we're at now with 18 different services, many of them publicly funded, the need for integration and the role of technology in that. You also mentioned the $7.5 million you have been provided to achieve this monumental task.
Perhaps you could speak broadly about federal leadership. If the federal government was serious about public ground transportation and wanted to play a substantive role in enhancing the work you're doing, what would that role look like? How could the federal government play a meaningful role in ensuring that northern British Columbia residents had access to affordable, safe and convenient bus transportation?