Transport Committee on Nov. 8th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting no. 88 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 Tuesday, March 7, 2023, the committee is meeting today to study projects of high frequency rail and to discuss 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.

Colleagues, appearing before us today are officials from the Department of Transport: Monsieur Vincent Robitaille, assistant deputy minister, high-frequency rail; Monsieur François Camiré, director general, technical, engineering and impact assessment, high-frequency rail; Chantale Côté, director general, policy and governance, high-frequency rail; and Luis Miguel Izquierdo Martin, acting director general, commercial and procurement, high-frequency rail.

Welcome to you all.

We'll now turn it over to you for your five-minute opening remarks. The floor is yours.

[Vincent Robitaille, Assistant Deputy Minister, High Frequency Rail, Department of Transport]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

On behalf of Transport Canada, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to be a witness this evening.

My name is Vincent Robitaille, and I'm the assistant deputy minister responsible for high frequency rail, or HFR, at Transport Canada.

I would like to begin by acknowledging that we're gathered today on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe peoples.

The HFR project is the largest transportation infrastructure project that Canada has seen in generations. The objective of HFR is to offer faster, more reliable and more frequent rail service.

HFR is more than a rail project. Fifteen million people currently live in the Corridor. The populations and the economies of Ontario and Quebec will only continue to increase, as will the demand for all modes of transportation, including passenger rail. This project presents an opportunity to meet future demands while transforming rail travel to a more sustainable and more accessible way of travelling for future generations.

At this moment, VIA Rail cannot make improvements for passenger services. Rail congestion on the current tracks limits the frequency of departures, the reliability of arrivals and the speed of reaching the destination. To put it simply, without a transformative investment, 10 million trips per year would be taken using higher emitting modes.

HFR consists of building a new intercity passenger rail system over 1,000 kilometres in length to serve Toronto, Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, Laval, Trois-Rivières and Quebec City.

HFR will provide fast, reliable and frequent service. It will triple the number of rail passenger trips in the corridor to at least 17 million by 2059. It will at least double the number of train departures between major cities, with at least 12 departures per day. It will dramatically improve reliability to ensure that trains leave and arrive on time. It will provide faster service, offering shorter journey times. It will continue to serve communities currently served by Via Rail, such as Kingston, Cornwall and Drummondville, with expected improvements to scheduling and convenience. It will create thousands of well-paying jobs during the design, construction and operation of the service.

As an electrified service, it will deliver significant reductions in GHG emissions. It will positively contribute to the Government of Canada's commitment to reconciliation with indigenous peoples.

The HFR project will be delivered in four phases.

The first phase of the project, from 2017 to 2121, was focused on due diligence of the initial VIA Rail proposal. This assessment concluded that investment in passenger rail was necessary and would bring important social, economic and environmental value.

The government announced in Budget 2022 its decision to proceed with phase 2 of the project—the procurement phase. Also in 2022, a new subsidiary of VIA Rail, VIA HFR – VIA TGF Inc., was created to serve as the project delivery office for HFR.

While the HFR is building capacity, the government needs an innovative procurement process that takes into account the lessons learned from other Canadian and international infrastructure projects. Via HFR serves as technical and commercial adviser during this phase.

Once the procurement is completed and subject to government decisions, the project will then move to phase three, co-development. The co-development phase will be fully led by HFR Inc. The activities will focus on developing and finalizing the HFR design, accelerating engagement with stakeholders and preparing the final project agreement contract. This will be followed by a fourth phase, the actual construction of the project, and the fifth phase, which will be maintenance and operations over 40 years.

The HFR project continues to gather momentum during the procurement phase. In February 2023, the Government of Canada launched a request for qualifications to qualify three consortia to advance to the next phase. In July, the government qualified three bidding teams—composed of many of the most accomplished Canadian and international firms—and invited them to the request for proposals. Just this October, the government launched that request for proposals, which is a critical step that will lead to the selection of a private developer partner for the project. Proposals are scheduled to be received in the summer of 2024, with the evaluation completed in late 2024.

To maximize benefits and innovation, the request for proposals requires bidders to develop two solutions that meet the project outcomes—one with speeds of up to 200 kilometres per hour, and one that includes high-speed segments to achieve shorter journey times. This will allow for a rigorous assessment of the costs and benefits of incorporating high-speed rail on each segment of the corridor.

With this approach, the government will be able to choose the best solution for the HFR based on robust competition between many of the most accomplished Canadian and international firms. We are convinced that this type of competition will maximize innovation and deliver the best project for Canadians.

This concludes my remarks.

Once again, thank you for inviting me to speak on this exciting project.

It will be a pleasure to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Robitaille.

We'll begin tonight with 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.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here, and for the testimony. I'm looking forward to getting to some questions.

Before I do that, I would like to move the motion I brought forward at the last meeting and gave notice of. I will read it again, but everyone should have it in their digital binder.

It says:

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 additional resources necessary to accommodate these meetings.

Mr. Chair, just this week, the environment commissioner tabled his report, which indicated that Canada will not meet its climate targets, despite the carbon tax and other measures the government has imposed on Canadians. We know the carbon tax has a specific and particularly significant impact on the transport sector, whether it's trucking, trains or buses. We heard, in our study, that it was a significant cost. Marine and rail have carbon tax impacts. Those impacts are passed along throughout the supply chain to consumers.

One thing the commissioner said in the report he tabled was this:

...we expected that the plan would identify which groups would be disproportionately affected by the plan, which measures would mitigate those effects, and which process would assess if those measures are working. However, federal organizations lacked a comprehensive set of performance indicators and the disaggregated data (that is, separate data on affected groups) needed to understand the plan's effects on specific groups.

I think this committee has an opportunity to do the work the environment commissioner indicated had not been done by the government: to look at the specific impacts on the transport sector, which are then passed on to Canadian consumers. I think we should support this motion.

I move that one of our next studies be on the impacts of the carbon tax on the transportation sector.

I look forward to hearing what other committee members have to say about that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Strahl.

The motion has been moved, so we'll get to discussion on that.

I open the floor up to questions and comments.

Go ahead, Mr. Muys.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Over the course of the last year, we've had a number of witnesses before committee. I've asked a number of times about the impact of the carbon tax, and we've heard from not just bus operators but people in other industries, in all those sectors that Mark mentioned, the air, marine and transport sectors. In fact, I heard from truckers at the fall fairs in my riding about the impact of the carbon tax on their industry.

The motion has been put forward, and I think it would be good to add that to the list of studies we have going forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Muys.

Are there any other questions or comments?

Go ahead, Mr. Bachrach.

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

I think this is an interesting study. We have a whole number of studies in the hopper, if I'm not mistaken. My preference would be to broaden the scope to look more broadly at the contribution that the transport sector makes to Canada's emissions profile, the impact of carbon pricing on the transportation sector and the vulnerability of Canada's transportation sector to extreme weather and climate impacts.

If we're going to proceed, I'll make that as an amendment, and I'm happy to provide it in writing to the clerk.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Are there questions, comments or concerns over the amendment proposed by Mr. Bachrach?

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

I think we would like to see that. The details will obviously be important, in that, if we're going to have a study on the impacts of the carbon tax, we can talk about these other things.

I don't know that the motion prevents Mr. Bachrach from going down that road during one of those five meetings, but if he wants to submit that to the clerk, we'd certainly entertain it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Strahl.

Mr. Bachrach has requested a five-minute break for us to be able to put that in writing and submit it to members. If members are in agreement with that, we will pause for five minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I call this meeting back to order.

I just want to confirm with Mr. Strahl that he has, indeed, received the written version of Mr. Bachrach's amendment. I'm seeing a nodding head from Mr. Strahl.

I'll turn it over to Mr. Bachrach to read it out for everyone so that we can have a discussion on it.

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

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I don't think this committee, at least during my time here—and I've been on the committee for all four years that I've been an MP—has studied the climate dimension of transport. I think it would be a very interesting topic. My attempt here, first of all, is to build a consensus among committee members and, second, to broaden the scope of the study a bit to include the other dimensions of the challenge. Namely, these are the contribution that transport makes to our emissions as a country and the impact of climate change and extreme weather on the transportation system.

My amendment reads, “That the committee undertake a five-meeting review of the contribution of the transport sector to Canada's climate emissions profile, the impact of climate change and extreme weather on Canada's transport sector and the impact of the carbon tax on the transport sector. That the Minister of Transport appear on this matter, and that the committee find additional resources necessary to accommodate these meetings.”

I could do it one more time. Do you need it one more time, Madam Clerk?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Carine Grand-Jean]

It's just for the translation. It's up to you. You can just say it again.

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

I know you want me to try it in French, but I don't know if I'm quite up for it.

I will move that amendment, and I will also move a motion that we postpone the vote on the amendment and the motion until such time as we have the translation. I believe the clerk said we should have something in 30 minutes. It's just so we can get on with the testimony.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

That's a dilatory motion. We will go directly to a vote.

(Motion agreed to)

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Thanks for your patience, colleagues.

The clerk has just informed me that she has received the translation. She's going to try to get that out to everyone. It will probably take another two to three minutes. Please bear with us. Thank you.

Colleagues, the clerk has informed me that the translated version of the amendment proposed by Mr. Bachrach has been circulated, so we can continue the discussion.

With that in mind, I'll open up the floor to any questions, comments or concerns.

Go ahead, Mr. Strahl.

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

I appreciate Mr. Bachrach's addition to expand the scope. Again, I think we could have had those discussions, but it's nice to have it there in black and white.

I would endorse the amendment and be prepared to go to a vote to approve this motion as soon as possible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Strahl.

Are there any other questions, comments or concerns, colleagues? This is on the amendment.

Go ahead, Mr. Muys.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Can I ask for a recorded vote?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

You can definitely ask for a recorded vote.

I will ask the clerk to read out the motion.

[The Clerk]

I will read the motion with the amendment.

It will read as follows: “That the committee undertake a five-meeting review of the contribution of the transport sector to Canada's climate emissions profile, the impact of climate change and extreme weather on Canada's transport sector, and the impact of the carbon tax on the transport sector; that the Minister of Transport appear on this matter and the committee find the additional resources to accommodate these meetings.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Are there any other questions or comments?

Mr. Muys, I believe you had your hand up. Was that just for a recorded vote?

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

It was for a recorded vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

We will go to a vote on the amendment as proposed by Mr. Bachrach.

(Amendment negatived: nays 6; yeas 5 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

We will now go back to the original motion.

Is there any discussion on the original motion, colleagues?

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

Mr. Chair, in terms of timing, the motion doesn't specify timing. My assumption would be that the work the committee currently has scheduled would proceed and that this would follow the work that's currently in the calendar.