Transport Committee on Nov. 6th, 2023

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

Very briefly, are there other jurisdictions that have rules in place that prioritize passenger traffic over freight, and if so, where?

[Mario Péloquin]

Well, if we just look south of the border to our neighbours, they do have rules in place that prioritize passenger trains over freight trains.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bachrach.

Next we have Mr. Strahl.

Mr. Strahl, I'll turn the floor over to you. You have six minutes, sir.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would just like, at the beginning of my time, to give notice of a motion.

The motion is as follows: “That the committee undertake a five-meeting review of the impact of the carbon tax on the transportation sector and the increased costs it places on Canadians, that the Minister of Transport appear on this matter, and that the committee find the additional resources necessary to accommodate these meetings.”

I'm just giving verbal notice of that. We'll get the written notice to the clerk as soon as possible.

I'm now moving on to my questions.

I asked the Via HFR folks what they envisioned the per passenger subsidy would be to operate the Toronto-Quebec City service. They said they hadn't gotten that far down the process.

Mr. Péloquin, can you confirm what the current per passenger subsidy is, on average, for a passenger travelling from Toronto to Quebec City?

[Mario Péloquin]

The subsidy levels for operating Via Rail are quite complex, because we operate a real mix of services on different routes. It is a complex issue. We can certainly look at our annual reports and provide that information.

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

I'd appreciate your getting that information back to the clerk to be distributed to all members.

What impact do you think the new HFR will have on your passenger levels? Do you think there will be a higher per passenger subsidy required if you are losing passengers to this other service, which is literally competing alongside?

[Mario Péloquin]

I believe the arrival of HFR will not really change the way we operate the long-distance and regional parts of the railway; therefore, I can't predict that there's going to be much of an impact on the level of subsidies. The way we operate at Via Rail today is that we look, financially, at all of those by separate lines, the corridor being one, but even in the corridor, it's subsegmented. We also have the numbers for the various lines.

If we continue operating the service the way we're operating it today—for example, between Toronto and Vancouver—I don't see why there would be a difference in the level of subsidies, other than.... I talked about sustainability a few times. We continuously look at ways to improve the way we use public money so that we control our costs better and better every year, and we try to generate as much revenue as possible.

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

I want to concentrate more on Toronto-Quebec City. Toronto-Vancouver is a whole different story.

In an ideal world, what is your schedule if a consumer goes on the Via website and says, “I want to travel from Toronto to Quebec City”? What is the scheduled time for that in an ideal world?

[Mario Péloquin]

I would like to refer that question to my chief service delivery officer.

[Rita Toporowski, Chief Service Delivery Officer, VIA Rail Canada Inc.]

Thank you, Mr. Péloquin.

Travelling from Toronto to Quebec City would require a connection in Montreal. Toronto to Montreal takes about five hours, requiring a connection time depending on when the next departure is going, and then from Montreal to Quebec City is an additional three hours. You're talking a minimum of eight hours plus the connection, so it's probably closer to nine hours, but it really is dependent on time of day and the frequency we have at that particular point in time to make it easy to connect.

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

Okay, so if it's nine hours, what is the real time? What is the average passenger...? How long does it currently take to go from Toronto to Quebec City? We talked about your being very close to being on time for some of the segments, and for others you're on sidings waiting for freight trains. Do you have information as to what the current average time elapsed would be for a trip from Toronto to Quebec City?

[Rita Toporowski]

I don't have something offhand that I can offer you in terms of what that would like right now. We do have delays.

What I can say, though, from an OTP perspective, is that within the corridor that we currently run on CN, we're running at about 60% on-time performance. On the 3% of the trackage that we own, we run at 90% on-time performance, so there is quite a disparity.

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

Right. I understand that, but would you, again, get that information and submit it to the committee? I think it's important that we compare current service levels with future service levels and determine whether the cost of the proposal is worth the time savings, etc. That would be good.

How much time do I have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

You have 23 seconds, Mr. Strahl.

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

Okay, I will come back for my next round.

I thank the witnesses for their answers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Strahl.

Next, I'll turn the floor over to Mr. Rogers.

Mr. Rogers, the floor is yours. You have five minutes, sir.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the opportunity to put some questions to our witnesses.

Welcome. It's good to have you here.

Mr. Péloquin, I think you mentioned 200 years for Via Rail having been in the railway business. Of course, historically, trains and railways have played a huge role in building Canada, especially with the movement of goods and people.

Can you share with this committee how investing in high-frequency rail would benefit Canadians?

[Mario Péloquin]

As you rightly pointed out, railroading in Canada was country building. It helped link the west to what we today call central Canada. There has been economic development from those days in the late 1800s, when the transcontinental was built.

The eventual arrival of a high-frequency rail will do very much the same thing. It's very different, because we're not going to move goods and people; we'll focus on people.

We can look at countries all over the world. In France, for example, the arrival of TGV has actually shrunk the country. A map exists where you can see that because of the travel times, now people can commute from cities where it was impossible in the past.

That is the kind of effect that high-frequency rail will have in Canada.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Mr. D'Angelo, you were also making some commentary around that.

Do you want to jump in there as well?

[Marco D'Angelo]

With respect to building rail and—

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

How would that benefit Canadians overall?

[Marco D'Angelo]

We've been supportive of connecting communities by rail, whether it's Via Rail doing so with its plans in the corridor or Metrolinx helping to connect cities that are across the greater Toronto area and the greater Golden Horseshoe, bringing people to Niagara seasonally to enjoy tourism—to come back to the tourism question.

There is the opening of innovative projects like the Union Pearson Express, which helps to bring people from Pearson airport to enjoy downtown Toronto. Rail projects are helping to connect communities around the country, like the expansion of the REM and the continuing build-out of the Ottawa LRT. There are plans for other rail projects in Mississauga and Brampton. The potential for projects in Hamilton and in Quebec City has advanced a bit and they're even talking about it in Gatineau.

Across Canada, cities and leaders are turning to urban rail as an effective solution for moving groups of people around.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

You mentioned at the beginning that there are 20 million people in the region and growing, with another five million in the future. We see the need, obviously, for that.

Mr. Péloquin, Via Rail estimates that by offsetting more cars and car trips, HFR would reduce emissions by 10.3 million to 13.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over the project's 30-year life cycle.

Can you explain to this committee how you came to these findings and how you plan to reduce emissions?

[Mario Péloquin]

I can't really speak to the numbers that the Via Rail HFR team has analyzed and developed. At a high level, I can say that a train is much more carbon emissions-efficient than an airplane or the 250 cars, approximately, that you would need to travel the same distance.

There's a real green benefit to operating a train as opposed to all the other transportation modes over long distances.