44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 8, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/8/23 12:29:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. He seems very optimistic about what is happening in the United States. It could change completely, depending on who is elected next. I, for one, am not that optimistic.
Now, there was a word missing from his question. He talked about electrifying transportation, but we need to talk about public transportation. That is what is important. That is what is lacking in this country. There is almost no public transport. I once came here by train from Vancouver, and we had to keep stopping to let the oil through. That is not public transportation. Frankly, it is a bit ridiculous. We need public transportation for people who have to travel, and we need to stop always thinking about oil. Of course products and goods have to get through, but it should not always be to the detriment of those who take public transportation.
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- Jun/8/23 8:11:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one of the ways we would provide better access to child care would be to provide choices to Canadians, but we would also make sure that Canadians were not burdened with the heavy costs of inflation and high interest rates. They cannot afford a home to live in, so they cannot even afford day care because of the costs the government is piling on, not just with one carbon tax, but now a second carbon tax.
People in outlying communities have no choice of transportation or public transit. Those are the people who are being hurt the most by the government, and the government is doing nothing to help those people with child care.
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- Jun/8/23 8:46:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, transporting oil by rail is very risky. The problem with pipelines is that they do not replace rail transportation to the pipeline. They actually increase transportation capacity. Pipelines are therefore risky too and do not do away with rail transport. The overall risk goes up. That is very concerning.
The government must make the safety of its citizens its top priority.
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- Jun/8/23 9:27:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we certainly believe that we need to move forward with this legislation. As I said from the get-go, we feel that we are still continuing to pay too much lip service to the corporate interests of the big rail lines and the port authorities. We need to address a number of issues.
For example, the issue of the regulation of greenhouse gas reduction targets for the port authorities is huge. We need to make sure that we have the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act as part of this.
That could be under clause 107(2), where we could make sure that for these huge centres where traffic and transportation are happening, where goods are being moved, we actually have a long-term plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I think that would send a very positive message to Canadians.
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Mr. Speaker, I guess the member was not listening.
None of the concerns she just raised would actually be addressed by Bill C-33. No one, other than my colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable, has actually spoken more about safety. I was on the transportation committee when we introduced the rail safety report that was referred to in debate. This piece of legislation was actually the first report as I joined the committee, and it had started in the previous Parliament. None of those recommendations have been acted upon in this legislation. The supply chain task force started in January 2022. It had a report on October 6, 2022, eight months ago, with 13 immediate recommendations, the first of which was to deal with port congestion. None of those have happened. It is a big failure of the government.
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Mr. Speaker, the motion is pretty self-explanatory. I do not know what more I could say in depth.
We think that Bill C-33, as well-intentioned as it is, just does not do enough. It needs a major rethink. The people who drafted it need to go back and read this report, which I was just referencing, and the very good, well-written reports coming out of the transportation committee.
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Mr. Speaker, I will ask forgiveness again from my colleagues in the House and those who are watching. I have asthma, and the smoke is killing me today.
It is a pleasure for me to rise today to speak to Bill C-33. As many of my colleagues know, I spent a lifetime in the transportation industry prior to being elected, doing everything from owning and operating a small ground-handling business to serving in various management and executive roles in the airline and airport side of the industry. I spent a lifetime in promotion of our country's opportunities. I know a little bit about ports, airports and supply chain logistics.
I spent a lifetime in pursuit of our national, provincial and regional opportunities, including tourism, air service development, supply chain logistics, and the safe and secure transport of our goods to market. It is through the lens of these experiences that I stand here today to offer some comments on Bill C-33 and not only the failures I see in this bill but also the failure of the government after the last eight years. It is a failure to realize the key opportunities that Canada has in our logistics, our geographic positioning in the world, our ports and airports.
Canada's transportation industry has long been a pillar of our nation's economy. It connects people, businesses and communities from coast to coast to coast. Simply put, it connects Canada to the world. We are, after all, a trading nation. Our success as a nation is predicated on our ability to get the goods we produce to market, our ability to seamlessly move the products and services we produce, facilitating safe and secure transport, and seamlessly accessing our country, to and from our communities.
From 1903, when Wilfrid Laurier launched our national railway from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert, the freight rail sector of Canada's economy has been the backbone, moving more than 320 billion dollars' worth of goods annually from coast to coast to coast.
Canada's national railway is the only transcontinental railway in North America. It connects three coasts, those of the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. Almost all sectors of Canadian economy are served by its freight trains, including manufacturing, agriculture, natural resources, wholesale and retail. In recent years, we have seen the fragility of our supply chain and our transportation network.
Railways are a vital mode of transporting goods within Canada and to our international markets. They provide a cost-effective and efficient way of transporting bulk commodities such as minerals, grains, forest products and manufactured goods. The reliable and extensive rail network supports the competitiveness of Canadian industries and facilitates international trade.
The railway industry directly employs a significant number of Canadians. It encompasses a diverse range of jobs, including train operators, engineers, conductors, maintenance workers, administrative staff and more. We must always ensure that those workers, those Canadians who are on the front line, whether it is in our ports, railways or our airports, are always safe and secure. This bill does nothing. It does not go far enough to ensure that. Additionally, the railway sector indirectly supports employment in related industries such as manufacturing, logistics and supply chain management.
Railways enable industries to access raw materials, transport finished goods and connect markets. The efficient movement of goods by rail contributes to cost savings, supply chain optimization and business competitiveness. In the last eight years, Canada has taken a step back in our global competitiveness. Why is that? It is because, in our previous Conservative government, we had a government that understood what Canada had, the opportunities that we had. It invested in trade agreements, bilaterals, with other countries, and it invested heavily in our ports and airports.
We had a strategy. We had a game plan on how we were going to capture the world and connect to the world. One example is the Asia-Pacific gateway program, where the former Conservative government invested a billion dollars in our ports; our airports; our roadways, working with our provincial governments; and our railway system. I will be the first to say we did not go far enough, but we had a plan to continue putting Canada on the map. When I look at the list of the top 60 ports, I see that I have toured almost every one of them. I stood there, whether it was in Antwerp or whether it was in Rotterdam, and saw the efficiencies. I dreamt that, one day, and I have always said this, if Canada ever figured out what we wanted to be when we grew up, we could flip this world on its ear.
Canada could be what Rotterdam is to the EU. We could do that here, whether it is connecting our ports to our airports or connecting our ports to our railways and our roadways. I have not heard anybody in this debate talk about the intermodality of our network, our supply chain and our transportation network. If we are catching fish off the coast of Prince Rupert and transporting them by truck to rail and then onto an airplane and just, in the same day, catch that day service in Asia, we have those opportunities.
The world needs more Canada. It wants more of the products we have, but we continue to fail. In the last eight years, we have seen a government that has allowed rail blockages and has allowed labour disruptions to continue, and that sends a message, not only to our competitors but also to our customers, that Canada is not open for business. Bill C-33 would not address any of that.
We have talked about the congestion being experienced in our ports and our airports, whether it is warehousing that we cannot get or is backed up, staff disruptions or employee disruptions, labour disruptions or rail capacity.
If members will indulge me, I would like to share a letter I received this morning. It is from one of my constituents, who owns a lumber mill. I have been very vocal about championing our softwood lumber industry. Time and again, our rail service, or lack of rail service, in this country is failing our softwood lumber or forestry industry. Simply put, it cannot get rail cars. What happens? The products, worth millions upon millions of dollars, sit in the yard.
The letter suggests that, if people in federal and provincial governments care about the forest industry and its remaining companies, then urgent action on the lack of CN service is required. If action isn't taken, the permanent closures seen thus far in 2023 will continue. My constituent says that if forest products cannot be shipped to market weekly, especially because the market is a difficult one, the industry will not survive. Companies will have to close, or perhaps move to the southern U.S., where they will not have to deal with CN's terrible service. According to the letter, nobody in government, federal or provincial, has yet had the courage to take on, never mind fix, the problem of CN's lack of service to the forestry industry, which has been a serious one since 2014. This person says that the industry has been begging for help, to no avail, and that they are extremely disappointed and unimpressed. They feel that the farming industry has been treated with more importance, with the passage of legislation and a considerable improvement in the level of services.
I put that into the record because I have met with the current Minister of Transport. I have met with his predecessor and I have met with their predecessor.
From the day that I was elected, I have continued to raise these issues. I have raised them with the minister who can actually do something about it, and I have raised it with the company, repeatedly. There are mills, not only in my riding but also in ridings in western Canada, that are closing because we cannot get our products to market. Do not even get me started on the fact that the government, after eight years, cannot secure a softwood lumber agreement, but our forestry producers are facing unbelievable tariffs and penalties on top of not being able to get their product to market. They cannot get rail cars. Why is that? It is because of our rail capacity.
We had a former government that invested in twinning highways, putting overpasses in so we could move goods on longer loads and twinning railways so we could have double-stacked rail cars going through. We had a former Conservative government that invested in land terminals so that if there were land constraints at the port, goods could move inland, like in Prince George, where I am from. It has CN Worldwide Distribution Services right there. It has a large yard where the cars are interchanged. Not only that, but it invested in airports. The airport in Prince George has the third-longest runway in Canada. It can handle the largest aircraft and can compete with any airport in terms of handling cargo. Straight through my riding, I was on the world stage in the promotion of the Port of Prince Rupert and the Port of Vancouver. The Port of Prince Rupert is the fastest and greenest route to Asia in North America. It has the deepest open-water port. It connects to the fastest and greenest rail network into the U.S. Midwest.
We have so much opportunity, and the current government just does not see it. I do not know whether the Liberals do not see it or just do not want to act on it. It is not like we are not telling them this. They stand there and promise they are going to do better. There is lots of talk about prorogation. Perhaps we will go into an early election if the speNDP and Liberal coalition breaks. I would assume that there will be some big announcements about what the Liberals are going to do again if they get elected. If they get elected, what are they going to do? They will probably not follow through with their promises, which is what we have seen time and time again.
The maintenance, expansion and improvement of the railway infrastructure requires significant investments. These investments create jobs during the construction phase. They contribute to the economic activity of our communities. Furthermore, ongoing infrastructure development helps enhance capacity and efficiency of the rail network, leading to increased productivity and economic benefits, not only for the communities that they serve, but also all across our nation. Again, I will go back. It puts Canada on the map. It gives us another opportunity for economic success and prosperity. We have not seen that with these guys.
I heard the member for Winnipeg North say that, under their government, the Liberals invested in CentrePort or they started CentrePort. That was not done by the Liberals. I was on the front lines with CentrePort from the very beginning. It is an incredible port that was started by a Conservative government with considerable dollars for marketing and efforts and investment in terminals with the project. Again, intermodality would bring the products into CentrePort, and it could ship them into the U.S. Midwest as well by air, by truck or by rail. These are things that I have not heard anybody talk about in this.
I do not have the benefit of sitting on the transport committee. I would love to do it someday, maybe. I know we are back and we have capable people who work on that file. Our shadow minister is incredible. The whole transport team is incredible, and I know that it raised these issues within the committee.
It is just frustrating when we see a bill, like Bill C-33, that is probably well intentioned, but did the Liberals listen to the stakeholders who were there? They did not. Time and again, whether it is this bill or a Fisheries Act bill when I had that file, they say that they do consultations, but they do not.
Our colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands brings up good points. It is frustrating that we just spent the whole day talking about climate change. Canada's transportation network is among the greenest in the world. It gets our products to market. It supports good-paying jobs. It allows Canada's products, whether they are tech products, agriculture products or natural resources products, to get to market so we can benefit the world.
As I said early, the world needs more Canada and we have great producers right here, but they struggle with getting their products to market. Why? It is because we failed them. More specifically, the government has failed them over the last eight years.
As I said, we have spent a great deal of time talking about climate change in relation to the Bloc opposition day. Rail transportation is generally considered more environmentally friendly compared to other modes of transport, such as road or air.
One day, someone spoke to me about the rail system and the train going through their community all the time. I asked whether they would rather see the chemicals on that train be in trucks going through their community or would they rather see it on rail. Rail gets chemicals off the roads onto an area that is less inhabited, with less contact with the public and the community.
We cannot look beyond Lac-Mégantic. We never want to see one of those disasters again. Bill C-33 does not address the challenges that we see. We only need to look as far south to our friends to the south to try to make things better. When we make things better in terms of the safe and secure transport of goods and people, the world is our oyster. Canada can be whatever it wants to be. It sends a message to the world that we are open for business.
I remember going up in an elevator with the CEO of the Seattle port authority. She was a very nice lady. She saw my badge that said where I was from. She said, “You are from Canada.” I said I was. She said, “You are causing a lot of people in our business headaches.” I asked her why that was. She said, “We do not want Canada to become competitive.”
Our border communities, whether by road or by rail, lose so much leakage to our U.S. counterparts, our friends. Why? It is because its airports are more efficient. Its policy regarding airlines and ticketing is more efficient and cheaper. Its ports are also more efficient.
Whether it is goods or people, there is so much leakage transborder that we are losing that Canada could capture by just reinvesting and rethinking what we want to be when we grow up. We should start with our transportation network and have a real ports and airports strategy.
We can look to the south to see what the U.S. does when it invests in its airports and ports. It gives authority to those running the airports. It gives opportunities to the public and the producers, whether they are shipping or producing goods, whether the public want to go to and from, and visit friends and travel abroad, Canada has failed.
I cannot speak enough about the uncharacteristically high number of delays and cancellations seen within our aviation industry in recent months. It is not enough for our airlines and airports to sit there and point fingers at one another and assign blame. We have to do something about it. Only a government that is intent on making things better and actually helping our transportation ecosystem to realize its potential can do that.
At that time, we can move our goods to market, move our culture, share our culture, our people and our goods, and really make sure that Canada finds its place in the world market.
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- Jun/8/23 10:59:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Cariboo—Prince George and I are in quite strong agreement that we have infrastructure problems in transportation.
Here is my view at this point, having been working on these issues, as my hon. colleague has, for quite a while. We created in the 1980s harbour authorities and airport authorities that are arm's length from government and completely unaccountable to anyone. They are arm's length from the minister. The minister cannot get involved in the decisions of the airport authority or the harbour authority, except of course to rubber-stamp when they want something as destructive as the expansion of Roberts Bank.
I wonder if the hon. member agrees me that we ought to open a bigger conversation: Do these airport and harbour authorities work for Canadians?
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- Jun/8/23 11:49:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, could the member expand a bit more on what impacts the transportation system had on the grain handling in 2013 and 2015 and how that impacted the farmers? That grain did not hit the marketplace in Vancouver until a year and a half later. Could the member comment on what negative impacts that had on farmers and on how this act would not react to that or solve those kinds of problems?
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- Jun/9/23 12:10:15 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, tonight, climate-fuelled wildfires continue across the country, almost 15 times the 10-year average for this time of year.
Upward of 126,000 people across the country have been evacuated because of these fires. We know parents who are keeping their kids home from the playground because the air quality is so bad. Earlier this afternoon, I was pressing for an end to fossil fuel subsidies. I am glad to be back in the House, now after midnight, to keep pressing for solutions, real climate solutions, such as public transit, for example.
For us in Ontario, transportation is the largest source of emissions, at 32%. While electric vehicles may be part of the solution, they also have many drawbacks, including contributing to more sprawl and poor land use planning decisions, the embodied carbon of manufacturing EVs, the rare metals needed to manufacture them, and the fact that owning a car remains out of reach for many in my community.
Canadian transit riders, by comparison, are disproportionately low-income workers. They are women and people from racialized communities. Many cannot afford to drive, and 64% have no access to a car, among those who take transit.
It is why, prior to this year’s budget, I was pressing for the governing party to invest more in public transit, specifically recognizing that municipalities like mine are being forced to raise fares while, in some cases, simultaneously cutting services due to a lack of sufficient investment from higher orders of government, not that there is none, but that it is insufficient.
Specifically, groups across the country such as Environmental Defence and the Canadian Urban Transit Association were sounding the alarm at the time, warning that transit systems are at risk of falling into a death spiral without critical operational support that had run out since the worst of the pandemic. Sadly, the budget missed the mark, with no new transit funds committed.
This is what Nate Wallace, program manager for clean transportation at Environmental Defence had to say: “It is very disappointing to see that this budget does not include much-needed funds to support transit systems now.”
Truthfully, to me, it is a shame that we are even talking about this. If we were responding to the climate crisis at the scale required, we would not just be talking about emergency operating funds. We need to be talking about going a step further, and I believe that the parliamentary secretary may agree with me on this, that we need federal funds so we can scale successful efforts to reduce fares altogether.
One example was started by a friend of mine, Dan Hendry, co-founder and director of Get on the Bus, who piloted a program in Kingston, Ontario, that provided on-bus training and free transit passes to high school students specifically. What was the impact? High school ridership increased from 28,000 rides in 2012 to close to 600,000 rides annually, which is exponential growth in ridership among high school students, by providing training and free bus passes.
Municipal leaders in my community are now looking at this model, and I would love for them to do it. I want young people in the Waterloo region to have better options. However, municipal leaders are having to discuss this without the benefit of federal funds to subsidize it.
My question is this: Will the governing party step up for these emergency funds and go further, recognizing the crisis we are in?
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- Jun/9/23 12:14:22 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, public transit is dear to my heart. In fact, I do not own a car myself. I actually think an important part of public transit is including active transportation infrastructure, which is why I am so proud our government created the first national active transportation fund.
Support for transit means greater quality of life for Canadians, and our government has made the largest investment in public transit in history. Since 2015, we have provided over $20 billion in federal funding to support public transit projects in communities across Canada.
To ensure Canadians continue to benefit from transit options, the Government of Canada has introduced the permanent public transit program. I cannot underline the importance of that enough. It is permanent funding. It provides federal funding to support projects that deliver expanded urban transit networks, affordable zero-emission transit options, transit solutions for rural communities and additional active transportation options.
The permanent public transit program provides $14.9 billion over eight years, including $3 billion per year ongoing starting 2026-27. This commitment builds on the support already available for transit across the country from existing federal programs, support that has been crucial during the pandemic as ridership has seen significant declines.
The investments we are making in public transit will also reduce greenhouse gases through a commitment to support zero-emission transit options. That is why the Government of Canada is investing $2.75 billion through the zero-emission transit fund to help transit and school bus operators fund new vehicles and necessary supporting infrastructure as their transition their fleets.
One exciting part is this also helps to create jobs in some of our communities. For example, the City of Toronto has purchased buses that are manufactured in Winnipeg, so there is another piece to this as well.
Outside urban areas, we are helping to get Canadians moving through the $250-million rural transit solutions fund, the first federal fund to target the development of locally driven transit solutions for rural, remote and indigenous communities.
The Government of Canada's continued investments in transit will help provide options for Canadians. Our investment in public transit is helping to provide an essential service to many Canadians, generate billions of dollars in economic benefits and help Canada meet its climate targets as we approach 2050.
Now that public transit ridership in communities across the country is rebounding, the Government of Canada is supporting a strong and sustainable comeback. Through the safe restart agreement announced in 2020, our government committed to an investment of up to $2 billion to support municipalities with COVID-19 operating costs. We also committed to an investment of an additional $2.4 billion in funds to match provincial and territorial funding to support local transit authorities in cities and towns across Canada.
This investment is helping our cities and towns to keep their transit systems running so Canadians can get to work and home to their families safely. For example, in British Columbia the safe restart agreement committed an additional $540 million in federal transit funding to support local transit authorities across the province.
The transit investments we are making will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, provide health benefits and better serve disadvantaged groups, including women, seniors, youth and people who have low incomes. Public transit is very important. We are continuing to support it, and we will continue to do so.
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- Jun/9/23 12:18:02 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, I really appreciate, and I expected it this evening, that I do not need to convince the parliamentary secretary about the importance of transit, as a transit user herself.
It means we can have a more adult conversation about what needs to be done in the midst of the crisis we are in. Again, I recognize and appreciate the funds that have been allocated in the past on transit but also want her, and the governing party, to recognize that this is not sufficient.
First, it is not sufficient in terms of emergency operating funds that organizations across the country have been calling for and were not delivered. Second, it is not sufficient to ensure we can actually reduce fares to increase ridership at the pace required for young people, for example, to start habits of using transit from a young age and continue doing so in order for us to shift the curve on the climate crisis and address the transit and transportation emissions we know we have.
How will she continue to advocate within the governing party to see the investments increase at the pace this crisis requires?
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