Transport committee  There can always be more money. The question is where is it going to come from? In Canada we have to balance what comes in with what's important to Canadians. We poll Canadians all the time, and we know health care is always important, education is important, and transportation i

Transport committee  I think we'd agree with that. We have to remember that despite the stimulus spending on the economic action plan we still have a huge infrastructure deficit. That includes what we see in Montreal as a good example. We have roads and bridges, but we also have other infrastructure

Transport committee  Yes, and we really feel that the reason CAA has existed for over 100 years in some jurisdictions is because the local knowledge has allowed the clubs to be at the grassroots with their members. We have nine member clubs, as you pointed out, pretty much provincially designated.

Transport committee  Certainly all levels of government can be involved. We also have to look at the experts and best practices. You gave the examples of Whitehorse and St John's. I'm sure other cities have used smaller vehicles, for example, so instead of having one 18-foot bus you could have—I'm ju

Transport committee  Yes, certainly. We live in a vast country. I think we have something like 900,000 kilometres of roads. And everyone has a different environment. We have done work over the past few years on senior drivers, for example. Public transit obviously is good for senior drivers in a c

Transport committee  Certainly. We mentioned this in our opening remarks when we talked about intelligent transportation systems, information systems. There are ways to utilize our existing infrastructure more efficiently. They have started it in the U.K. and parts of the U.S. as pilot projects. We

Transport committee  There are two different parts to that. The first part is what we should do at CAA. What we like to do is--I'll coin a phrase that Mr. Walker uses--to be an honest broker. We work at bringing people together to share ideas. There was a recent example of this last May, when we he

Transport committee  Thank you for the question. Certainly the federal government has a role. As we know, funding for some of the infrastructure comes through the federal government through gas taxes and what not, but we found in our federation, much like in Canada, that a lot of the expertise on th

Transport committee  Yes, we'd certainly support that. We act in much the same way with our issues. We meet with stakeholders across the country; we engage people in best practices. For example, we mentioned this conference we're having in March next year on distracted driving. We'll invite experts f

Transport committee  As long as you're not driving the bus or train, it would certainly be safer in there, yes, without question.

Transport committee  I'm going to ask my colleague Mr. Walker to speak to that, because he was involved in instances like this in his former life. Maybe he can shed some light on that.

Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to meet with your committee to discuss public transit issues. The Canadian Automobile Association is very pleased to meet with your committee early in its mandate. My colleague Jeff Walker, our vice-president of public affairs, and I