Thank you and good morning.
I really appreciate the opportunity to speak today. I'm honoured to join you from the traditional territories of Sinixt, Syilx, Ktunaxa and Secwépemc peoples.
I'm hoping to summarize some of the key rural considerations for the committee.
When we talk about rural transit, we often focus on prominent examples like the loss of Greyhound Canada, but what's important to note is that this type of example isn't necessarily representative of the range of services that exist. Transportation between communities includes both long and short trips, those that are occasional and those that are regular. I want to pay particular attention to the need for intercommunity transit that serves these shorter regular trips.
As we know, it's a mistake to assume that people living in rural areas have access to personal vehicles. It's equally a mistake to assume that these regular shorter trips happen in the same community. It's much more common for people today to have the services they regularly use, their places of employment and their homes all in different communities. This highlights a need, particularly in those communities where there's a shortage of affordable housing and workforce shortages. The people needed to fill these workforce shortages end up living in outlying areas or neighbouring communities. The lack of intercommunity transit can really impact the ability of people to go to school, to see a doctor or to hold a job. This situation disproportionately impacts certain parts of our society, including youth, seniors, indigenous peoples and newcomers.
I want to offer a few highlights about what my research tells us about rural transit in Canada today.
We often treat rural as if it's a single homogenous group for which rural solutions or strategies are discussed very generally and do not recognize differences across different types of rural places. We found several barriers to sustainable rural transit between communities, and those included general challenges like the cost of operation, and very place-specific challenges like local travel patterns or economic structure. When we looked at related funding and support programs, we identified two substantial barriers: the lack of rural-specific funding and the lack of funding for operational costs.
It is important to note that the current state of knowledge around transit and rural places is very geographically uneven. What we know is dominated by the experiences of larger urban-adjacent communities, particularly those in southern Ontario, southern Quebec and British Columbia. Through our work, we identified over 100 examples of rural transit systems, most of which were actually intercommunity services. This highlights both a need and the growing number of available solutions, not just fixed-route bus systems but also more innovative approaches like on-demand services.
I want to spend my remaining time on three key considerations for the committee.
The first is that there is a need for us to address knowledge gaps, particularly when it comes to under-represented communities and regions. These knowledge gaps limit our ability to make evidence-based decisions. The federal government should continue to support efforts to address these gaps, not only through academic research but also through funding communities and regions to assess their needs and evaluate potential solutions. In the interim, we should be conscious of gaps and biases in the information we have.
The second consideration is that differences across places, particularly in rural, mean that there is no single solution. There is a key need to include rural considerations in the development of policy, programs and solutions so that we avoid unintentionally leaving out or otherwise negatively impacting rural places. The recent federal rural transit solutions fund is a great example of a rural-specific program.
Solutions for intercommunity transportation need to be flexible. While those solutions could look different across the country, there is a need for connection and collaboration between them. The federal government has an important role to play in ensuring continuity across Canada.
Last, I'll leave you with the fact that we really need to acknowledge and account for the differences between where the benefits of transit accrue versus where the costs are borne. We know that transit services have a range of social, environmental and economic benefits. A fundamental challenge is that where those challenges accrue is dispersed among individuals, businesses, communities and society, whereas the costs are all borne by the service provider. This situation is exacerbated in rural areas because of long distances and small populations.
The federal government has an important role to play in addressing this challenge not only by, say, publicly funding a transit system but also by deeming what is eligible for funding. The federal rural transit solutions fund I mentioned could be greatly improved if it allowed for operational funding.
I think I'm probably pushing five minutes, so I will leave it there. Thank you very much.