Transport committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It's our pleasure to be here today. I commend you for the topic. This is something we've wanted to be able to address parliamentarians on for some time. First I'll give you a little background on the Canadian Trucking

Transport committee  Yes, definitely. We'll set aside whether we're talking about side guards or side skirts. I'm talking about side skirts, and there's no question that side skirts—you'll see them in our diagrams—do improve fuel economy. Perhaps somebody has made a side skirt that can also be a

Transport committee  Yes. The pop trucks, again, operate within city centres. That's why you see side guards on those. Those side guards, I can guarantee you, are not creating a fuel economy benefit in that particular case, because they're not travelling at highway speeds. They're not highway vehic

Transport committee  Well, it's very difficult. First, I would say that we have a problem right here at home, in that the provinces themselves can't seem to agree on national standards. Even where the government has constitutional authority over extraprovincial transportation, it chooses not to ex

Transport committee  Let me finish this point, if I could, please.

Transport committee  Similarly, on the environmental side, Canadian carriers are very far ahead of their U.S. competition in terms of the need to improve fuel economy, which has the byproduct of improving GHGs. Whether that's because fuel was always more taxed here and more expensive here, I don't kn

Transport committee  No—

Transport committee  —not necessarily, but it can.

Transport committee  You're not necessarily going to put all of those things on all trucks, so the cost could be $10,000 or it could be something less. What we're talking about is repayable grants. We don't have a specific number, and I don't expect billions to fall from the sky tomorrow. We had pr

Transport committee  There are so many ways you can skin the cat. I appreciate Monsieur Poilievre's comments on grants. I only wish it were true for things like biodiesel and whatnot; billions were provided in grants for something that we're not sold on as a fuel. We could also be looking at LNG and

Transport committee  There are a few more of those these days too.

Transport committee  We have more than 4,500.

Transport committee  It's remained more or less steady. People who belong to trade associations or companies tend to be a little better at running their businesses than those who don't. The industry has seen a lot of capacity leave the marketplace through business failure and, in the last year, throu

Transport committee  We're not far from the hybrid electrics now. Class 6 and 7 trucks are pretty much there; the class 8s will come.

Transport committee  Well, class 8 is your big, heavy tractor-trailer. As you go down classes, it's a weight class, so they're the smaller trucks.