Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Happy birthday to the committee's analyst.
This morning, we should start with a quick review of the motion.
The motion as amended reads:
That the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure, and Communities request that the Departments of Transport, Revenue, and Employment, as well as the Prime Minister’s Office, forward to the committee clerk, within 60 days of the adoption of this motion, all correspondence, reports, emails, and documents relating to the issue of non-compliance in the trucking industry since January 1, 2022, and that Departments and Agencies tasked with producing the documents apply redactions as per legal obligations under the Privacy Act and Access to Information Act;
That the Committee add three additional meetings of two hours each as part of the study of the changing landscape of truck drivers in Canada, so that in the first meeting, it can hear testimony from victims of heavy trucks and representatives of Justice for Truck Drivers, The Caledon Community Road Safety Advocacy Group (CCRSA), and The Joy Smith Foundation; in the second meeting, testimony from representatives of 6S Trinity Transport, J+R Hall Trucking, Dan Express, Carmen Transportation, Ludwig Transport Limited, Canada Post, and the Association des professionnels du dépannage du Québec; and in the third meeting, testimony from representatives of BC Trucking Association, Ontario Trucking Association, Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators (CCMTA), and the Alberta Motor Transportation Association;
That, immediately following these meetings, the committee, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), undertake a five-meeting study on what is needed to support, diversify, and modernize Quebec and Canada’s ports to find new markets to reduce reliance on the United States; that the committee report its findings to the House; and that, pursuant to Standing Order 109, the government table a comprehensive response to the report.
I'm really glad that no one called me out on relevance for not speaking to the motion, because that is literally the motion on deck.
I wanted to point out that I am very upset that, unlike Quebec, there's no mention of B.C. B.C. has wonderful ports, and I think that this is overlooked. However, I know that my colleague from Quebec always puts Quebec close to his heart, so I don't blame him personally for that oversight. If I were from Quebec, I would probably do the same.
Now, if you cast your minds back to where I left off, I was saying that moving to a new study before we significantly addressed BC Ferries.... I believe this is still a very contentious issue, with $1 billion being sent to a publicly owned corporation, BC Ferries, and being used to purchase ships from China.
There's also subsequent infrastructure that would be involved because these are hybrid ships that utilize batteries.
By the way, I'm just letting everyone know—this is the exciting part of the job—that this is the first application of a battery hybrid engine for ships of this size. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. They haven't been used to scale, so there's some question about whether these ferries will function as promised. I know that BC Ferries has used smaller ferries that have a hybrid engine in the interior of British Columbia, where they don't have the charging infrastructure.
The charging infrastructure that BC Ferries would be purchasing to charge these large vessels ends up charging its own batteries on diesel, which actually creates more greenhouse gas emissions than we'd usually have.
A portion of the $1 billion will be going to Chinese companies to build the infrastructure. We heard from the unions that they were quite upset that they had no say in.... BC Ferries wouldn't even tell the BC Ferry and Marine Workers' Union whether there's a made-in-Canada component to this or whether the infrastructure would actually be built by Canadian workers.
In my mind, it's not just outsourcing Canadian jobs in steel, aluminum and shipbuilding; it's actually pushed out to electrical components. It is not going to be Canadian steel, most likely, used to build this infrastructure. I should point out that the committee received a note, much of it redacted, from BC Hydro, citing large costs to build the infrastructure for this.
We still haven't produced a report on this. Why? Well, it is because we have not heard from the various ministers...to come and talk about this. Now, we could ask Minister MacKinnon to take some time away from the House leader's function, since he's probably spending 90% of his time keeping a minority government on the rails rather than making sure that our transportation system is efficient. If we brought him here, Mr. Chair, I would ask him, “Minister, on BC Ferries, what do you think about this BC Hydro connection? What do you think about all the electrical components coming from China and being put in place by Chinese workers?” He would just say, “Hey, it wasn't me. I had nothing to do with it...totally clean hands.”
For a minister to say that is a gift. It's a gift because it is terrible decision-making. As I said, Minister Freeland wrote to the provincial minister outlining her concerns about national security and wanting to ensure that not one dollar in capital investment from the federal government would go towards the acquisition of this, Mr. Chair.
I've spoken to many accountants about this kind of thing. That is completely preposterous. If you give money to operations, accountants will say that it pays down the debt. For anyone trying to contend that not one federal dollar will go towards the purchase of these things from Transport Canada, that is not true.
Maybe Mr. MacKinnon would not have totally clean hands. Maybe I could press him on that point. Right now, we don't have any ministers coming. In effect, the minister had her hands in the muck, but when things got too hot, she decided she was out, Mr. Chair. Maybe she couldn't live with the conflict.