Transport Committee on March 7th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 56 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 discuss its study of intercity transport by bus in Canada, and for committee business.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of Thursday, June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I wish to inform the committee before we proceed that all witnesses have been tested for today's meeting. They have passed the sound test for the benefit of our translators.

Appearing before committee today by video conference as witnesses are Dr. JoAnn Jaffe, professor, department of sociology and social studies, University of Regina, and Dr. Adele Perry, distinguished professor, history and women's and gender studies. Welcome.

We also welcome Mr. Pierre Maheux, administrator of the Bus Carriers Federation.

And next, from the Union des municipalités du Québec, we have Mr. Daniel Côté, president, and Mr. Samuel Roy, policy coordinator. Both will be participating via videoconference.

Finally, from DRL Coachlines Limited, we have Jason Roberts, general manager, by video conference.

We will begin our opening remarks today with Dr. JoAnn Jaffe.

The floor is yours. You have five minutes.

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

Thank you for inviting me. I'm joining from Treaty No. 4.

I'm going to make four points.

First, transportation is critical infrastructure, and this is true for rural and remote communities as much as it is for urban ones.

Second, the right to stay in rural places and the ability to live a good life are increasingly contingent on the right to move—that is, on mobility and the ability to get around as one needs and wants.

Third, mobility is more and more an intersection of inequality, particularly for already disadvantaged rural and remote people.

Fourth, the market cannot be expected to solve this problem. Innovative, integrated, system-wide public and co-operative models are needed to realize the full potential and benefits of public transportation.

I will take these in turn.

Transportation is critical development overhead capital. It is critical infrastructure for rural places. Its absence results in disadvantages and vulnerability for rural communities and the people who live there. Transportation substantially influences how and where social and economic activities take place, and the development path of rural communities. It plays a crucial role in shaping the relationship between places and the flows of people, goods and services.

However, it is easy to overlook the network and systems that constitute critical infrastructure, because the roles they play in enabling activities and providing public and private goods and services are often invisible. Transport policy is economic policy, rural development policy, agricultural policy, health policy, environmental policy, cultural policy and mental health and antiloneliness policy. It is also reconciliation policy.

The right to stay in rural places and our right to vibrant, sustainable rural places are increasingly dependent on mobility, or what people sometimes call accessing the rights to the city in and from rural places. Rural restructuring in Canada has meant more inequality in rural places, more poverty and food insecurity, more low-wage and temporary workers and more immigrants, while services, both public and private, are leaving rural places and centralizing in larger towns and cities. People are increasingly living their lives across regions, with jobs, education, family, health care, social services, shopping and leisure activities spread across distances. As the private sector and governments improve their bottom lines for consolidations and service reductions, these costs are transferred onto rural users, who must pay more and travel farther or else forgo services.

These same people are less likely to have access to communications technologies to compensate for the loss of transportation and access to services, such as the ability to find medical advice online or shop online. For people to live and thrive in rural places, they need transportation.

Places play a role in perpetuating poverty, as does the uneven development between places. Constraints on transport-based accessibility “tend to deepen these socio-spatial inequalities leading to multidimensional deprivations and, eventually, poverty traps”. They also intensify and worsen the experience of disability and make it harder to leave situations of domestic violence and abuse.

In contrast, transportation accessibility and mobility in poor regions can improve access to higher-quality public goods and social services for disadvantaged people living in those areas, and promote poverty alleviation and a better quality of life for both individuals and communities.

However, we should not expect the market to solve this problem. As opposed to democracy, in which it is “one person, one vote”, markets respond to money, and more money equals more votes. Markets respond to the possibilities of private profitability. Depending on markets to decide whether or how transportation operates is unlikely to yield solutions to the problems I have outlined here.

Besides, society has created an uneven playing field between public transportation and private automobiles. The entire system is shaped by automobility—the default assumption of widespread access to and dependence on the car—and pervasive but mostly invisible subsidies to automobiles and trucks in the form of public dollars going to the construction and maintenance of physical infrastructure and to dealing with the effects of accidents, pollution and lost opportunities.

Governments can and do intervene in transportation networks to shape systems that better reflect public policy objectives, such as facilitating access to health care, education and work.

It is true that improving transportation can be a double-edged sword for rural regions. The wrong investments can advantage richer regions at the expense of poorer areas. However, with proper consultation and recognition of local needs, the effects of public transportation investments are likely to be equality-enhancing and poverty-alleviating, benefiting both populations and regions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Dr. Jaffe.

I'd like to take a special moment to welcome back Dr. Perry. It's good to see you again. We look forward to hearing from you at this meeting.

Mr. Maheux, we now continue with you, and you have the floor for five minutes.

[Pierre Maheux, Administrator, Bus Carriers Federation]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My name is Pierre Maheux, from Autobus Maheux, a bus transportation company. This family business, which acquired its first school bus in 1958, 65 years ago, now has about 200 vehicles and 330 employees.

It provides various types of bus transportation, including school, charter, intercity and package transportation. More specifically, it now provides in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region a portion of the services previously offered by Voyageur. It covers nine intercity routes in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Montreal and Outaouais regions.

Autobus Maheux therefore has a certain experience, not to say expertise, in bus transportation, especially in serving our regions and our populations whose intercity transportation services are suffering greatly.

In fact, the intercity transportation network, particularly in Quebec, is currently facing a major problem, with 2022 ridership not being what it was in 2019. Most carriers are still in recovery mode, which causes concern for regional transit lines.

In the case of Autobus Maheux, the main line providing the link between Rouyn-Noranda, Val-d'Or and Montreal is the one that has always financially supported the seven other regional lines. There is therefore a cross-subsidization, which is important to take into account in view of the question period that will follow.

Today I am addressing your committee primarily on behalf of Autobus Maheux, but I am also a director of the Fédération des transporteurs par autobus, the Bus Carriers Federation, in Quebec, the result of a merger between the Association des propriétaires d'autobus du Québec, APAQ, and the Association du transport écolier du Québec, ATEQ.

In 2002, as part of my duties as a director at the time, I had the opportunity to appear before the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, then chaired by Senator Lise Bacon. I made much the same case there that I feel I have to make to the federal government today.

As the lady who testified before me mentioned, the problem remains the same. Rural areas will see services disappear. Although the primary responsibility for transportation services to the regions rests with the provinces, particularly through assistance programs, it is the federal government that has given them this responsibility.

But as I mentioned in 2002, the federal government may not have to regulate provincial assistance programs, but it does get involved in intercity transportation anyway. I am thinking in particular of Via Rail Canada, which receives huge amounts of federal money and does not refrain from competing with intercity bus carriers on various routes, such as Montreal-Quebec City or Montreal-Senneterre.

In my opinion, the federal government could offer assistance programs that would have a huge impact in the regions. In Ottawa, Montreal or other major centres, 25 extra passengers on an urban line is a negligible statistic, but it's different on a regional line, where 10 extra passengers can guarantee the line's existence and prevent its demise.

Rural areas are not the preferred target of governments and municipalities, who favour urban areas, which is logical, as that is where the critical mass is. However, I think it is important that the federal government pay more attention to the problem of abandoned regional lines.

In terms of the financial assistance that can be provided, I can submit proposals. However, I can tell you that the 2022 ridership on the network in our region is down by 50% from 2019. On our main line, which is supposed to be the one that sustains the network, ridership is down by 30%. According to my colleagues at Intercar, ridership has dropped by 50% in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and Côte-Nord regions, and only 25% of the clientele remains on these regional lines.

The closer you get to the major centres, the better the situation. For Montreal and Sherbrooke, Transdev Canada confirms it is still 20% to 25% short of its usual volume.

To get an idea of the problems in smaller cities, we need only look at Beauce, where my colleague Pierre Breton, of Autobus Breton, has announced the end of service between Beauce and Quebec City via Saint-Georges, Sainte-Marie and Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce, because it is a loss-making route, like three other routes we operate: Rouyn-Noranda to Toronto, through Ville-Marie and North Bay, with Ontario Northland; Rouyn-Noranda to La Sarre; and Val‑d'Or to Chibougamau northward, with Intercar.

In rural areas, many lines are loss-making, but some still exist for the simple reason that the Quebec government has provided them with emergency financial assistance. I think the federal government has a more important role to play regionally.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much.

[Pierre Maheux]

I would have more to say, but I understand that five minutes goes by in a snap. I will continue by answering questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

There will indeed be questions later. Thank you.

Next we have Mr. Roberts for five minutes.

[Jason Roberts, General Manager, DRL Coachlines Ltd.]

Good day.

I didn't get the interpretation of the previous speaker, so I'm going to go with what I have in turn.

The bus situation in Canada, as one of our speakers said before, is very binding in terms of bringing areas of our province and our country together with the outlying areas and the rural areas. For me in Newfoundland, we call it the Trans-Canada from Port aux Basques to St. John's. St. John's is our major hub. Most of the major activities that happen in someone's life will take place in St. John's, be it medical, be it at the largest airport, or be it the full gamut of whatever takes place.

For me, I've been at this for 27 years, operating from St. John's to Port aux Basques. After a Crown corporation gave it up because they were losing so much money, we decided to buy it.

I think one of the biggest things I want to really stress to everybody here is the out-migration. The numbers are coming down, but even with the numbers being stable right now.... They are pretty good right now in terms of the number of people who are using transportation. It's always very interesting to me why we, as a carrier going to the major centres and back and forth to all the other towns and cities in between, are treated differently from our metropolitan areas. They get this great big subsidy to operate their service. Where do we stand?

I can use our Metrobus service in St. John's, Newfoundland. Between Metrobus, the hub and Wheelway, which are three different divisions of the city transit, they receive a subsidy of approximately—I'm going to stay on the safe side—$16 million a year to operate the service. They service around 200,000 people. We service 250,000 people and we get no money—none.

There was a comment made yesterday on the news in Newfoundland about how the province would love to see more intercity and rural transit available to help with pollution or to help with whatever, with greenhouse gases and the whole gamut, but to me, just leave the greenhouse gases and treat society equally. That's the way I look at it. We want equality of some degree across the province of Newfoundland and across the provinces in Canada. We need it. I don't care who does it; I'll give it up to the government. If they want to do it and subsidize it, it doesn't matter.

The reason that I've kept going and that we've kept going is that we feel it's detrimental if we don't. It's one more thing gone out of our society that will never be there if people like us don't keep it going, always living for the brighter day. I'm living for the brighter day when there's going to be a little more people and a little more availability of some funds to help with capital infrastructure.

It just amazes me; there was a big announcement in St. John's yesterday about electrifying the Metrobus buses, but we still have to go and pay our price for our nice Prevosts to go up and down the road there, and we get nothing. It really makes me wonder about the full picture. How can this not be fixed so that we're treated with a little more equality across the full country? How can we not make this happen?

We're the only operator running this route. When we stop, it's over. No one else is going to be crazy enough to do it, I can promise you. Thank God I'm operating some other business. I'm still looking for the big day and for this to really earn its own way, but after 27 years, no. It still won't happen.

I've been promised and committed to for umpteen years, for 15 or 20 years, that there's money that's going to come available. There's infrastructure money available. Newfoundland got $111 million for infrastructure funds for transportation, but guess what? We're not included in that. It's just the City of St. John's and the City of Corner Brook. They don't know where to spend it. They got so much funding they don't know where to spend it. It's going to go back to the federal coffers. What better place to put some of that?

I would operate three times a day, right across the island, if I had per capita for the people we're serving in comparison to the city with its subsidies. I would offer service that would blow you away with what you can do in Newfoundland by getting on public transit. It would really make.... It would give us interest to know that someone really cares, but right now, I don't think anyone cares. Leave it; let it die, drop, go away. When it's over, it's done and gone and it's forgotten about.

I can promise you that we're not going away yet. We have to keep going because we have people who depend on this. I ran through COVID, and there were days that I ran two motor coaches 2,000 kilometres for as little as $800 in a day, with no conversation whatsoever—none whatsoever. There were people who needed to get to that doctor and had no other way to go.

I feel a bit of commitment to society and to try to keep this going as long as we can, but believe me, some subsidy, some help.... I don't care how it's done. I don't want to make money; just make me break even. I want to keep it going. It's a bit of our culture. Our company has been in business for 102 years. This is our 102nd year. This is something we took on 30 years ago, and we don't run away from things easily. Mr. Rogers there, he's from Newfoundland. He knows we don't run away.

I really think that there's some way, or some shape, to make this happen.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you so much for your opening remarks, Mr. Roberts.

Mr. Côté and Mr. Roy, it is now your turn and you have five minutes.

[Daniel Côté, President, Union des municipalités du Québec]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Members of the committee, thank you for having us. I also thank the other witnesses for being here.

I am the mayor of the city of Gaspé, Quebec, and the president of the Union des municipalités du Québec, UMQ. I am accompanied by Samuel Roy, director of policy at the UMQ. Thank you for allowing the Union des municipalités du Québec to speak to your study.

First of all, it is important to recall that, for more than 100 years, the UMQ's mission has been to bring together municipalities from all regions of Quebec in order to mobilize municipal expertise, to support its members in exercising their jurisdictions, and to promote municipal democracy. The UMQ represents more than 85% of the population of Quebec and the territory of Quebec, as well as 95% of municipal budgets in Quebec.

In our view, the mobility of people over a territory as large as Quebec is an extremely important lever for stimulating economic vitality, but also for opening up the Quebec regions. The latter must be linked to the major centres and to each other by solid and reliable intercity transport networks, in order to ensure access to services and jobs for all.

In Quebec, a significant portion of intercity bus transportation is provided by private carriers. Since the pandemic, as previous speakers have mentioned, there has been a drop in frequency, which is associated with a drop in ridership on several bus routes. We are talking about buses linking Quebec City and Montreal, which is often the busiest route in Quebec, but also buses that link Quebec City and Havre-Saint-Pierre, on the North Shore, via Saint-Siméon, in Charlevoix, for example. There are also other links in Gaspésie and Abitibi.

With profitability no longer in the picture, operating these routes is no longer advantageous for private carriers, but it is still essential for the vitality of the regions served. It is above all the financial support of governments, particularly municipal governments, that keeps these routes active. As such, the UMQ would like to share with you two recommendations to be implemented to improve intercity bus transportation.

Our first recommendation is to modify the Rural Transit Solutions Fund and increase its budget envelope, so that it fully achieves its objectives. The union believes that the fund should allow for the financing of operating expenses and not only infrastructure expenses, a point I insist on, in order to contribute to the maintenance of intercity transport services. The needs on the ground are substantial, and increasing the amounts provided would make it possible to go even further and develop current services, in addition to consolidating those that are in place.

Our second recommendation is that the federal government and the Quebec government quickly reach permanent agreements to allow for the distribution of the funds provided by the Rural Transit Solutions Fund and the Zero Emission Transit Fund. At present, Quebec municipalities and transit operators are the only ones in Canada that do not have access to the money in these two funds. There are surely reasons for this, which we will discuss in question period. However, these amounts are necessary to meet the needs of municipalities and operators on an ongoing basis.

For example, projects covered by the August 2022 transitional agreement under the Rural Transit Solutions Fund were funded, but projects that were not included in the transitional agreement were not funded, even though the federal government had responded positively to the applications. It is therefore important that the federal government come to an agreement with the province.

With regard to the Zero Emission Transit Fund, its implementation should help accelerate things in terms of electrification. I don't need to remind you that this is essential to meeting greenhouse gas reduction targets, including those of the federal government.

In conclusion, I would like to remind you that intercity transportation allows us to occupy our territory, counteracts its devitalization and prevents the isolation of rural communities. It is an important economic vector, but it is also an essential service in the regions. This is why we are asking the federal and Quebec governments to come to an agreement, so that Quebec operators and municipalities have access to additional funding to ensure the sustainability of intercity bus transportation.

I'll stop here and wait for the question period for the rest. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Côté.

We will now transition to the question period of this meeting. We will start with Mr. Strahl.

The floor is yours. You have six minutes.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, everyone, for your presentations.

We heard about funding and subsidized ridership, etc. I want to get into that a little bit.

I think what we've heard previously is that there is an enormous subsidy per rider for something like Via Rail. Obviously there are massive investments, with hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars going into more money for Via Rail. What I note about that line and what we've heard about the Windsor-Quebec City corridor is that it's already quite urban. It's already quite well served by other modes of transport. It's not that difficult to get to a major airport, for instance, from places along that line, yet there is still an effort to increase service and pour billions of dollars of government subsidies into it.

I'd like to follow up with Mr. Roberts.

I found your testimony compelling when you talked about what you could do if you were given a bit of support. What is your view when you see the federal government putting billions of dollars into well-served markets while markets like yours in Newfoundland and Labrador, as you said, get nothing? Is there an equality issue here that you feel needs to be addressed, and how should the government address it?

Obviously, Via Rail is a Crown corporation. I'm not sure if your brighter day would include being made into a Crown corporation, but I'm interested to know how you think the federal government could support those rural communities and individuals who don't have easy access to other modes of transport and would rely almost exclusively on the bus if they're looking for an option other than a personal vehicle.

[Jason Roberts]

We speak about equality. We'll leave Via Rail for a minute, because that's right in a major hub of the world. I just look at equality when it comes to a smaller city. Even Corner Brook in Newfoundland, which is a very small city, does get funds from the infrastructure fund for transit.

If we could avail ourselves of a portion of the funds there, even as a private operator.... I know sometimes you'll get private operators, but throw it on the table: “There are the books. That's where we're at. Look at the cost per kilometre for metro buses or some transit or whatever, and look up what we can do it for.”

I think one way it can be done is if there were some assets that could be put there to operate motorcoaches, just some way to recoup some of the costs. Also, what kind of service do you really want to have? We're running once a day from St. John's to Port aux Basques. It's about 1,000 kilometres each way, 986 kilometres each way. It's a long jog, but a very little help per kilometre per year would make a significant difference in what we could carry out as enhanced service, with twice-a-day service for a portion of the area to try to give more availability.

The dollar value is not significant to make this happen. We're the last game. When we stop, there will be no public transit across the island. We're it. It's not like somewhere that, as you're saying, has Via Rail or some operators or some shuttles and whatever. No one's leaving Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, on a shuttle bus and going to St. John's. That's 986 kilometres. It's not happening. They're not going from Corner Brook. They're not going from central Newfoundland. It just doesn't happen.

It's not only that; we operate in some pretty harsh, rough conditions there. If we're not out there in something that's good, dependable and durable, as my good Newfoundland saying goes, we'll be in the rhubarb before you know it. We have to operate this so that we won't be where we don't want to be.

Thanks.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

I appreciate that. That sounded like my old logger father there for a minute.

Mr. Maheux, you mentioned that perhaps governments aren't as interested in funding activities in rural Canada as they are in urban Canada. I think you mentioned that for governments maybe there's a cost-benefit analysis, and a dollar spent in an urban centre, where there are a lot more voters, is perhaps prioritized.

Can you just give a little bit more on whether the government should have a rural transit strategy or equality between urban and rural when it comes to serving populations?

Again, I think urban centres have a lot of options. People in urban centres often have many choices for how they get around, but in rural Canada, perhaps that's not the case.

Can you expand on that?

[Pierre Maheux]

Yes. Thank you.

I'll answer in French. I'm very bad in English.

Clearly, there is a huge inconsistency and difference between rural and urban needs, and those needs are not handled in the same way.

Jason Roberts says he serves a catchment area of 250,000 people. This is not the case in our network and in many places in Quebec. Instead, we go from towns of 3,000, 5,000 or 10,000 people to a town of 40,000 people, 80 or 100 kilometres in the centre of our region. That's a whole other problem.

The needs of 10 people, from Ville-Marie, La Sarre or elsewhere, who have to go to the oncology department of the Rouyn-Noranda Hospital are as important as those of any person living in the Montreal or Ottawa region. Yet there are needs that are not being met.

Curiously, despite its good will, the federal government has made some decisions—just anecdotally—that are a bit sad. In its first term, this government announced millions and billions of dollars for infrastructure, in Montreal for the Réseau express métropolitain, in Ottawa for OC Transpo, or in Toronto or Vancouver. This money is very much geared towards urban areas. This is normal because that's where the population is concentrated.

On the other hand, however, in 2017, the federal government announced the abolition of the tax credit for public transit. Yet, we need to talk to the users about it, because they are the ones who need it. In rural, less populated areas, people need this measure—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Maheux. Unfortunately, your time is up. However, I think someone else may ask you the same question.

Before we turn it over to Mr. Chahal for his line of questioning, I want to make sure, Mr. Roberts, that you finally have translation to ensure that any of the francophone members who'd like to ask you questions are able to do so.

Did you receive the number, sir, from our clerk?

[Jason Roberts]

I did, thank you. It's all good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Perfect.

We've also resolved issues with Ms. Perry.

Ms. Perry, I want you to deliver your opening remarks. Would you be willing to do that now?

[Dr. Adele Perry, Distinguished Professor, History and Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Professor Perry. We'll turn the floor over to you. You have five minutes.

[Dr. Adele Perry]

I'd like to thank the committee and the staff for allowing me to appear virtually from Treaty No. 1 territory. I do so as a settler whose primary expertise is in the field of history.

On the topic that concerns this particular committee, I want to share some of the central findings of the research I undertook with Dr. Karine Duhamel and Dr. Jocelyn Thorpe that examined the existing literature that connected the changing landscape of intercity transportation in western Canada—with a particular focus on Manitoba—and the ongoing crisis of murdered and missing indigenous women, girls and two-spirit-plus people.

The continent-wide shift toward automobility hit Manitoba in a particular way. Many of the smaller bus lines and passenger train routes closed in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. It is within this context that the near collapse of intercity bus transit occurred in the 2010s. Of course, as we are all aware, Greyhound withdrew from its already diminished western Canadian routes in 2018. In the same year, Jefferson Lines cancelled its remaining trip, which ran between Winnipeg and Fargo, North Dakota. A year later, the third company to try the Winnipeg-Selkirk route in a decade ceased operation.

Five years later, it is clear that the existing landscape is not sufficient to maintain reliable fixed-schedule bus routes in the province. There's a shifting patchwork of operators covering some routes at some times. Only two offer daily service. They are the shuttle running between Brandon and Winnipeg's airport, and NCN Thompson Bus Lines, owned by Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, running a Winnipeg-Thompson route. You can take Maple Bus Lines from Winnipeg to Thompson five days a week, Mahihkan Bus Lines from Winnipeg to Flin Flon five days a week, and Ontario Northland eastward six days a week.

As a sidebar, I'll note that the relative strength of north-south links, in comparison to east-west ones, suggests the importance of indigenous governments to any transit solutions in this context.

There is only one bus running weekly from Winnipeg to Regina, leaving after midnight on Saturdays. In late January 2023, you could book a trip through from Winnipeg to Vancouver that would take three transfers, cost about $419, and take about 37 hours. Something has changed since then, and as of last night, that route was no longer available. That leaves Via Rail's twice-weekly trip between Toronto and Winnipeg, with all the limitations this committee is well aware of, as the only possible public transit connecting western Canada's eastern and western parts.

The highly limited and confusing possibilities of existing intercity bus travel in Manitoba affect some people and communities more than others, as Dr. Jaffe has spoken to. We have too little data on exactly who depends on the bus in the age of automobility and air travel. The cratering of intercity operations in Manitoba and the prairies as a whole means that it's difficult to collect the kind of data that we all agree needs to be gathered to design the sort of transportation system that will adequately serve people and the communities they are a part of in the 21st century.

We know that women have a greater reliance on public transit, both around the world and within Canada. We know that around 18% of people in Manitoba are first nations, Inuit or Métis. We know the national patterns of violence against indigenous women, girls and two-spirit-plus people come to rest in particular ways in this place. We know that indigenous peoples experience higher rates of poverty, which makes the shifts towards automobility come to rest in particular ways.

That the sharp diminution of intercity transit options had implications for indigenous women, girls and two-spirited people was a point made in the wake of Greyhound's withdrawal from its western Canadian routes. The Native Women's Association of Canada explained in 2018 that they were deeply concerned for the safety of indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people. A year later, the final report of the national inquiry on murdered and missing indigenous women offered an important analysis of public transit, one that I think deserves more attention than it has received in this context. Chapter 7, in particular, explains how a lack of safe and affordable transportation can mean that people are forced to rely on methods such as walking or hitch-hiking, not only to escape dangerous situations but simply to travel for education or for employment. In this way, inadequate infrastructure and transportation, or transportation that itself becomes a site for violence, effectively—and I quote here—“punishes indigenous women”.

Two of the national inquiry's calls for justice directly concern transportation: Number 4.8 calls upon “all governments to ensure that adequate plans and funding are put into place for safe and affordable transit and transportation services and infrastructure for Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people living in remote or rural communities.”

In conclusion, I would say that effective transit policy must consider the needs and lived experiences of its users, who are not interchangeable but are people whose lives are shaped at the intersection of gender, economic resources, location and indigeneity.

The current lack of intercity public transit in Manitoba is a crisis in service, but it is also, by extension, one in data. Learning about the users of a service that currently does not exist presents particular challenges.

One thing I would urge your committee to do is to listen to those who have connected the lack of a reliable, accessible intercity public transit option to ongoing patterns of violence against women, and particularly violence against indigenous women, girls and two-spirit-plus people, and consider how a revitalized network of national transportation might play a role in addressing that.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Professor Perry, and thanks once again for your patience with some of the audiovisual challenges we have had.

Now we'll turn it over to Mr. Chahal.

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

[George Chahal, Liberal, Calgary Skyview, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses for providing testimony today. We've had a really good discussion on the impact to rural communities.

In 2017, the Saskatchewan provincial government ended its public funding for the Saskatchewan Transportation Company after 71 years. Dr. Jaffe, I want to direct this question to you, since you are from Saskatchewan. What rationale did the province offer at the time for eliminating public funding for the Saskatchewan Transportation Company, and what was the impact on the community?

[Dr. JoAnn Jaffe]

That is a very important question, because the STC was, I think, a very good example of what a provincial bus service could look like, and did look like, and it begins to show us what happens when you shut these services down. Of course, we don't have as much information as we need at this point, but there have been some studies that have been done, including at least one that I have participated in.

The stated rationale by the provincial government was quite simply that they felt that ridership was declining and that the per-passenger subsidy.... In particular, what they were talking about was that the per-passenger cost for the province was continuing to increase.

This was in light of the fact that the provincial government was actually starting to make it more difficult for people to ride the bus, I will say. This was in the face of rising prices. As ridership was going up, the province ceased advertising for the bus. They put some straitjackets on the way the bus was operating in terms of its ability to offer charters and under what conditions and what those costs would be, and so on. They actually set up a situation in which the costs per rider would be higher than they might be otherwise.

The impact has been quite interesting, and that is to say that although the ridership was supposedly low, the riders who were using the bus were very dependent upon it, and I also might add—before I elaborate on that, because I don't want to forget this point—that this bus was not just used for riders; it was also used to move goods around the province. It was used to move lab tests for soils. For medical services, it was used to move blood. It was used to take prisoners back to their home communities when they were released from prison. There were so many things that people were depending on that bus for. Also, of course, it had a low-cost service for people to be able to get to their health services.

When the bus service shut down, it had a tremendous impact on many people. Besides the fact that we can talk about the inequalities, which Dr. Perry referred to, which were quite significant here, we know that most of the people who used the bus were women, they were elderly, they were first nations, they were overwhelmingly young, and they tended to be lower income. Those folks were often left without any options. In some cases, people have moved to cities to get closer to their health services; in some cases, they're going without. We're hearing about people going without. We're hearing about people who are having difficulty getting out of problems of domestic violence. We're seeing more people hitchhiking.

We're also hearing, in rural areas, about businesses that are beginning to shut down because the small subsidies that they were receiving to be the depots in rural places made the difference for them in terms of their sustainability. Farmers are having more trouble getting parts, particularly small farmers and medium-sized farmers who were depending on the bus in order to access parts from the city.

The impacts are so large and so interesting. You have the first-order impacts and the second-order impacts on people. It really is something that I think in many ways was not predicted by the folks who ended up taking that decision, and it is a decision that refuses to die.

I was out in a rural area last weekend, talking to some folks who normally vote Saskatchewan Party, and they said to me that this is the one decision that would make them leave the party. It was very interesting, because they felt that it affected so many people across the board and was such an ill-considered decision that it makes them question the capability of the party to govern the province.

[George Chahal, Liberal, Calgary Skyview, AB]

Thank you so much for that in-depth answer. You actually answered several of my questions with that.