Transport Committee on Feb. 8th, 2024

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

Sure.

Go ahead, Mr. Blackburn.

[Karl Blackburn]

I think we need to look at what has already been done well. In Quebec, we have a few examples, including the Autoroute 25 bridge, Autoroute 30 and other public‑private partnership projects that have produced good results. At this point in our deliberations, we shouldn't completely exclude the private sector. I think a good mix between the public and private sector on a major project like this can certainly yield very conclusive results. I think we need to carry out this exercise for as long as possible, for the common good of this infrastructure and of Canada.

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

I'll ask again.

Mr. Blackburn, you talked about the evaluation of costs. You said that we don't know the costs, and I think you talked about the fact that we don't necessarily know the ridership. That was a question we asked at the first meeting of this study of the incoming president of the HFR.

I would ask if there's a business case for this project from your perspective. If so, what would it take to make it viable?

[Karl Blackburn]

As I mentioned earlier, I have the privilege of being accompanied by the chief economist of the Conseil du patronat du Québec. We ran out of time earlier, and I'm going to give my time to Ms. Kozhaya so that she can share some very interesting answers with you.

[Norma Kozhaya]

Thank you.

Yes, I believe that the proposals submitted by the three selected groups will help us answer a number of questions. Of course, we don't have data at this stage. However, assessments are being made using two scenarios: the first with speeds of at least 200 kilometres an hour and the second with speeds of at least 100 kilometres an hour.

Again, we can look to other countries as a benchmark. In fact, we mentioned some figures from a professor at UQAM who looked at certain experiences. You always have to have a cost‑benefit analysis.

It is important to have an effective link between Quebec City and Toronto or other cities, as the case may be. I also believe that a public‑private partnership can reduce the risk and cost of public debt, because public debt has a cost. We can draw inspiration from examples that have worked elsewhere, but there are examples that have not worked.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. Kozhaya.

Thank you, Mr. Muys.

Mr. Badawey now has the floor for five minutes.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm going to get a bit more granular with respect to the business of the business.

My first question is to Mr. Freemark. It's with respect to the importance of aligning all methods of transportation, keeping in mind that one of the benefits of this project is that it's not just moving people but is also moving trade on two separate lines, which will create more fluidity for moving people as well as for moving trade.

I'd like you to comment on the importance of aligning all methods of transportation, including aligning service providers. What I mean by that is not only aligning the methods of transportation—marine, water, rail, road and air—to move both trade and people, but also aligning the service providers in the individual jurisdictions. In Ontario, for example, there's Metrolinx and the intermunicipal transit systems.

Mr. Freemark, you can comment on that?

[Dr. Yonah Freemark]

With regard to freight services, the potential here for freeing up the existing corridor to allow for increased movement of freight by rail could be quite important to the corridor. If the passenger trains could be moved to a dedicated line, whether they're high-speed lines or not, and the existing corridor could be dedicated for freight services, there could be a substantial increase in freight movement along the line.

We do know from experience that freight rail is more environmentally sustainable than trucking-based freight movement. You can also have logistics centres where you connect the two in important multimodal locations outside of the major metropolitan areas.

My perspective is that one of the key elements here is creating a situation in which there is no conflict between freight and passenger services along the major elements of the corridor so that freight can move as freely as passenger service.

With regard to urban transit, there was a mention before. I agree with another panellist that one of the key goals here must be to ensure that the distance between the stations of the future line and the centres of population in the major metropolitan areas is as short as possible. Whether that distance is reduced by improved urban transit or by having the terminus in a very central location depends on the city, I suppose, but without that kept in mind, you could have people experiencing long-distance travel to get to the rail stations similar to what they experience with airports today, which would defeat the point for investing in the rail service. You need to get those rail stations in central, very transit-accessible locations.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

For all methods of transportation, whether municipal transit, such as a train to a ship—whether it's a cruise ship or something like that in the Great Lakes—or an airport, I guess what you're saying is that they should be in close proximity to each other.

[Dr. Yonah Freemark]

Yes, I agree with that.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Good. Thank you.

Second, be it binational or international, every place around the world is trying to be the destination to embark from. This project is a good opportunity for Canada to move people around the country with more fluidity.

Mr. Freemark—and I'd like Ms. Kozhaya to comment on this as well—how important is it to ensure that when we are doing the capital work, we do that not only domestically but also include our financial partners across the border in the United States while also doing a lot of destination planning with our international partners?

With that said, how important is it to begin investing, first off, not only in strategic locations, such as our capital—I'll use the words “the hot spots”—but with that being done, also helping to finance, as you mentioned earlier, future expansion?

Can you both comment on that?

[Dr. Yonah Freemark]

I can respond quickly to say that connecting with the Detroit metropolitan area is a huge opportunity for Canada and for the United States.

The United States has also made major investments in intercity rail in recent years. There's an opportunity to create a binational corridor of interest that could connect people across those large metropolitan areas, as you know.

That could also be true going south to New York City. It would require significantly more investment from the United States, but it could involve some interesting binational agreements that would benefit both countries.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Go ahead, Ms. Kozhaya.

[Norma Kozhaya]

Thank you.

Indeed, I think we have to start with our major cities, Montreal and Toronto, where most of the population lives. Eventually, we'll also address the issue of New York and other cities, because we don't have a choice. We're talking about repositioning our supply chains, because of all the geopolitical conflicts we're seeing around the world, while keeping our openness. However, we also have to strengthen our domestic market and our North American market. In that sense, the project may be the start of other projects with the United States, be it with Detroit or New York.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you to all the witnesses.

I want to make this final comment. We often talk about HFR and HSR. The challenge is that HFR is sometimes going to prevent HSR, because when you're stopping more often, it's more difficult to get the trains up to 200 or 300 kilometres per hour.

What we also look forward to is while being very strategic in having HFR in those areas we have to frequent, especially in opening up the entire country to services, in those areas that aren't as frequented, we're allowing HSR to be put in place.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Badawey.

Mr. Barsalou‑Duval is next for two and a half minutes.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Blackburn, in your opening remarks, you said that what is important if we want to maximize the speed and interest in using the infrastructure proposed by the government at present is to limit stops and not give in to political pressure to have the train stop in every possible suburban city. I'm a suburban MP myself, and I totally understand the interest, but I don't expect to have a high‑frequency or high‑speed rail station in my riding.

However, there is something I would like to understand. In the bill presented by the government, I get the impression that things are being mixed up a bit. There's a kind of in‑between: it's not quite a commuter train, but it's also not a train that connects major centres, even though it's presented as such.

When the government did its famous tour, it went to all the potential locations where there could be a station. Among those places in Quebec, I'm thinking of the city of Laval, among others. However, when we look around the world, I wonder whether high‑speed trains stop in suburban cities or not. I think time would be lost if they did.

I'd like to hear your comments on that.

[Karl Blackburn]

This is indeed a decision that will be extremely delicate to make, but for which the government must show courage.

The objectives of this massive investment are to shorten travel times, to promote greater complementarity among the various categories of transportation and to ensure that this can become an attractive competitive advantage.

If, unfortunately, you plan too many exits or stops, you run the risk of compromising one of the main objectives, which is to improve speed and frequency. That's why this is an important exercise. We need to focus on the most populous centres. That's why the Quebec City-Toronto corridor route, including Montreal and the stops in the initial project, is important.

After that, can greater networking with what already exists in outlying areas be improved? Of course.

However, as part of the initial project, if you want to resolve the situation of all travel between the various points by yielding to pressures that could be political, unfortunately I'm afraid you'll lose sight of the target and won't succeed in optimizing this investment in Canada for the years and decades to come.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Blackburn and Mr. Barsalou‑Duval.

Mr. Bachrach, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

National governments have the opportunity and, I would say, the responsibility to plan over long time horizons—let's say 100 years into the future—while the private sector more often focuses on delivering financial returns over a much shorter time horizon. The government's current conception of this project is to have the private sector intimately involved in the design process, if not leading the design process.

My question is this: What kinds of design decisions might be affected by a focus on maximizing financial returns over a shorter time period?

I'll start with Mr. Katz-Rosene and then go to Mr. Freemark, if we have time.

[Prof. Ryan Katz-Rosene]

For me, one of the main risks there in terms of having a quicker intended return on investment is the potential for a higher fare structure. I mentioned that before; I'll leave it there. For me, that's a real risk, because once you drive up the cost, the number one determinant for modal choice for intercity transport is the cost, the price. That ties in with HRS over HFR, because if you spend billions and billions of dollars on this massive project and you have a private firm trying to recoup those costs, you need to charge higher fares, and that is going to have an influence on your ability to take a share of the competing modes.

[Dr. Yonah Freemark]

I agree with that assessment.

We saw a public-private partnership for the project called Sud Europe Atlantique, which connects Paris to Bordeaux and was completed in 2017. That partnership involved a private contractor contributing to the cost of the line but as a result having very high toll fees for trains that used those tracks, which resulted in very high fares on trains that were using this system, even if they were fares charged by the existing public operator, SNCF.

Therefore, I also am concerned about the fare costs resulting from having a private investor. This is something that should be considered seriously by the government.

I did want to mention a few other things that might be relevant to decisions on private versus public development. There's been a lot of discussion in this panel about how many stops to have along the line. I would suggest one option is to have multiple types of services along the same corridor. This is feasible with multiple tracks.

You can have express services, for example, going directly from Toronto to Montreal or directly from Toronto to Ottawa, but you can also have regional services that provide stops along the way. A private investor is much more likely to concentrate services on those that have the highest ridership and, frankly, carry the highest-income individuals and serve the biggest cities. There's an option to improve service for the cities along the way, and that's where a public investor or public interest can play a bigger role.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Freemark, and thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Mr. Iacono, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd also like to thank the witnesses for being here this morning. It's a very interesting topic, and I would certainly like to have a station in my riding—Alfred-Pellan—in Laval, where there's a lot of vacant land. I'm working on it.

Mr. Blackburn, it's always a pleasure to see you. I'm going to go straight to some very short questions to give you time to get us situated.

What criteria do you think should be used to determine which cities will have stops for the future train? Will they be different depending on whether the train is high‑speed or high‑frequency?

[Karl Blackburn]

Your question is very interesting, but I'll be careful what I say so as not to provoke debate.

I think the criteria of population and density are important. However, there are also criteria related to development capabilities that complement other modes of transportation. If we want to have a structuring project that will maximize the use of the various modes of transportation and also optimize them in relation to land use and the structures used for procurement, I think all these criteria are the most appropriate to enhance all the other modes of transportation.