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Transport committee Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the committee for taking on this work. The closure of Greyhound Canada in 2021 was the end of a long saga of service cuts across the country. Transport Action Canada, an organization dedicated to researching sustainable public transportatio
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson
Transport committee I have one more sentence. We support the idea of the government providing financing that both private and public operators can access—possibly through low-interest loans, lease financing and tax relief on vehicles—and getting the HST off fares, for all Canadians.
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson
Transport committee I apologize. Thank you.
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson
Transport committee Thank you for that question. The leadership has to come from the federal government, though not all the control. The way I look at this is that there's a great deal of difference between leadership and control. The federal government needs to actually put some effort behind its
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson
Transport committee That's inaccurate. As we've heard, this is not in the constitution of provincial responsibility. That is delegated. The federal government can re-issue the role of regulator, especially across interprovincial bus services, which is the whole national network. What gets cut in o
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson
Transport committee It's not great.
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson
Transport committee Yes, I would. DRL is a kind of unique situation, because the bus line actually replaced the Newfoundland railway. It was previously operated by CN. There is kind of a responsibility to keep that running that is separate from the other responsibilities in the network. For exam
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson
Transport committee Actually, I'm not aware of any deliverable results of that task force. It is slightly before the time I became national president of Transport Action Canada. I was mostly working on advocacy in Ontario at that time. I am not aware of that task force having actually resulted in th
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson
Transport committee I'd love to take a run at that. One thing that happened when the railways in the U.K. were privatized, and therefore fragmented, was the resurrection of a 19th-century concept called a “railway clearing house”, which was a kind of non-profit co-operative among the carriers. It w
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson
Transport committee Absolutely, and you have one right here in the room with Rider Express. You have Onex Bus in southwestern Ontario as an example. You have a company called Book A Ride.
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson
Transport committee Actually, Kasper Transportation in northern Ontario is an example of one that existed while regulations were still in place in Ontario. They went through the application process for regulated routes, whereas now Ontario is deregulated and it's a free-for-all, as I was mentioning
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson
Transport committee It's partly because of the timing. A large number of newer operators have entered since the end of the pandemic. Some people were keeping the powder dry. Those who were already in the market, out of a sense of a responsibility to the communities they served, carried on, but there
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson
Transport committee Mr. Bachrach, I will apologize for not having a very good answer for you. My organization did commission a research study over the summer to look at this very question. Maybe, in due course, we will be able to point to models of things that are working. What I would say is what
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson
Transport committee Thank you for that. I think part of the problem at the moment is that the average wannabe passenger can't see that there are services where they want to go. A lot of people don't know that there's any bus service to replace Greyhound. Closing that information gap will help to ma
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson
Transport committee If I could go first, it is that clearing house. As I said, a lot of the operators don't even have general transit specification feed data on their websites that people can access to find out what the services are. We've tried. I've spent hours and hours trying to work out who's r
November 23rd, 2022Committee meeting
Terence Johnson