Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue No. 14 - Evidence - April 5, 2017
OTTAWA, Wednesday, April 5, 2017
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 6:46 p.m. to study the regulatory and technical issues related to the deployment of connected and automated vehicles.
Senator Michael L. MacDonald (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Honourable senators, this evening the committee will continue its study on the regulatory and technical issues related to the deployment of connected and automated vehicles.
Appearing before us are representatives of the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators. I would like to welcome Allison Fradette, Executive Director; and Wendy Doyle, co-chair of the Automated Vehicles Working Group of the CCMTA.
Ms. Doyle is also the Executive Director of the Office of Traffic Safety of the Ministry of Transportation of Alberta. I want to thank you both for attending our meeting.
I invite you to begin your presentations and afterward our senators will have questions.
Allison Fradette, Executive Director, Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators: Good evening and thank you for the opportunity for Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators representatives to be here this evening.
For those of you who may not be aware CCMTA is a not-for-profit organization. Our focus is coordinating the administration, regulation and control of motor vehicle transportation and highway safety.
Our members are specifically members of the provinces, territories and the federal government in the form of Transport Canada and the departments of transportation, public safety and public insurance.
Our mission is to ensure the safest and most efficient movement of people and goods by road in Canada. Our role as a forum, as an organization, is to provide collaborative road safety leadership in addressing Canada's road safety priorities.
We act as a forum to bring our provinces, territories and the federal government together so we can share, coordinate and look at matters of jurisdictional and national importance and to be able to raise issues among our members to ensure that we can advance ideas and find solutions that have the best impact.
As a forum, we seek to ensure national harmonization wherever possible, but also to recognize the provincial, territorial and federal autonomy that rests within each of those jurisdictions.
Automated vehicles are certainly an important, timely issue being faced by our members. I am very pleased to have Wendy Doyle here, a representative+ of the CCMTA Road Safety Research and Policy Committee, as well co-chair of the CCMTA Automated Vehicles Working Group.
Wendy Doyle, Co-Chair, Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators, Automated Vehicles Working Group, Alberta Transportation, Government of Alberta: Thank you for having us here this evening.
CCMTA members appreciate that the complexity of automated and connected vehicle technology requires collaboration among multiple stakeholders. Based on how we, as an organization, approach all priorities, CCMTA is well positioned in this regard. CCMTA members can learn from other countries and from experiences gleaned from each other as collectively we navigate the road forward on this issue.
For those in motor transport administration, autonomous vehicles may present a number of potential benefits. We understand that advancements in automated technology and current research on autonomous vehicles have created new possibilities for improving road safety, increasing environmental and economic benefits, and expanding mobility.
Knowing how and in what ways jurisdictions will need to adapt to be ready for the change is what has galvanized CCMTA's autonomous vehicles work.
In June 2014, the CCMTA board approved the formation of an Autonomous Vehicle Working Group which I co- chair along with a colleague, Mr. Mark Francis, from British Columbia.
Since then the working group has led several activities to support members in their understanding of autonomous vehicles and some of the regulatory and policy implications.
Among these a two-day workshop in November 2015 on autonomous vehicles for members was planned. It included industry and partner stakeholders.
We created a jurisdictional checklist for piloting AVs and communications materials to ensure consistency of language when responding to inquiries regarding testing and piloting or regulatory matters specific to autonomous vehicles.
More recently, in November 2016, CCMTA produced a comprehensive white paper on automated vehicles for its members. The paper provides a general overview of the benefits and key challenges of the subject and what other leading countries are doing to support this new technology.
The paper was shared in February 2017 with the Policy, Planning and Support Committee of the Council of Deputy Ministers Responsible for Transportation and Highway Safety and its task force on autonomous vehicles and connected vehicles.
CCMTA and the working group continue to monitor AVs for both non-commercial and commercial vehicles through jurisdictional scans, literature review and analysis of emerging related issues, including AV regulations, technology and testing results.
Staying connected with our partner organizations and key stakeholders is important to us. Since 2014, we have collaborated with various organizations to address AVs and to share best practices.
In Canada, this has included CCMTA participation with the Council of Deputy Ministers Responsible for Transportation and Highway Safety's task force on AVs and connected vehicles.
In the United States, my co-chair from B.C. and I represented CCMTA on the American Association for Motor Vehicle Administrators or AAMVA, a best practices working group on autonomous vehicles.. AAMVA has direct ties with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which also does work for the U.S. Department of Transportation.
In order to stay up to date, informed and knowledgeable on the autonomous vehicle file, CCMTA members and staff participated in a series of national and international sessions on autonomous vehicles, and we will continue to do so. We also continue to support research opportunities on this emerging technology that can help members.
In terms of the next key deliverable, the working group plans to develop a policy framework with respect to the administration, regulation and control of automated vehicles.
The CCMTA working group will review the AAMVA guidelines to ensure reciprocity for Canadian jurisdictions as it continues to develop its own set of guidelines. It is anticipated the AAMVA guidelines document will be released sometime in 2017.
CCMTA benefits by sharing knowledge and best practices. We welcome opportunities to collaborate, especially in an issue as complex and rapidly evolving as autonomous and connected vehicles.
As with any disruptive technology, there are a lot of unknowns as to how the technology may impact social, economic and environmental policies going forward. As always, the members will continue to approach this work with the interest of the collective and through the lens of road safety.
That takes me to the end of my remarks. My colleagues and I are pleased to take any questions you may have. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much for your presentations.
Senator Griffin: I have just a quick question at the start. You may have said this and I might have missed it.
Of the agencies or jurisdictions that are represented, does the federal government have any involvement in your association?
Ms. Fradette: Yes, the federal government in the form of Transport Canada representation is an equal member of the organization.
Senator Griffin: This is going to be very important in terms of going forward in the field of autonomous vehicles.
One concern I have is that it's embarrassing in our country we have quite a high rate of functional illiteracy. I see this as being a real challenge in terms of autonomous vehicles and people piloting them. I'm assuming you'll have to have a whole new testing regime in each province and possibly even training and retraining for existing drivers. Has that challenge been discussed?
Ms. Doyle: There are a lot of policy implications to this type of technology coming in. Specifically it will really depend on the type of automation or how highly automated the vehicle will be.
Right now, because the technology is very new, the jurisdictions are just looking at testing. The manufacturing and technology type companies are testing it. There are not any real deployed vehicles such as the Tesla in the U.S
We're lucky in the sense that there are no major deployed vehicles right now, but you're right that once they are available for mass market or for people to purchase there will most definitely be an education component for those who use them.
Senator Griffin: I'm from a small jurisdiction, Prince Edward Island, and I can visualize our highway safety branch being swamped with the influx of people needing testing and then possibly needing training. Some of that, I'm sure, can happen in the private sector but they would still have to be re-tested by the province. It could put quite a burden on all jurisdictions, but especially on smaller jurisdictions.
Ms. Doyle: The way it looks now is that industry seems to be testing in larger centres. It will depend on how highly automated the vehicle is. If the human remains the emergency operator, you still need the same operating licence as you would today. That won't change until vehicles are truly driverless.
Until that point, motor vehicle branches will still have to test and train drivers to a certain standard to ensure safety.
Ms. Fradette: Just building on that, one of the benefits of an organization like CCMTA is that when there is testing happening in other countries like the United States, we have really close ties with our American counterparts through the working group and other venues. We can build on the lessons learned that they've already incurred. Building on the experience of larger jurisdictions is really helpful for an organization or a province like P.E.I., which is a smaller jurisdiction.
The benefit of being a participant at CCMTA is building on the lessons learned from those larger jurisdictions that may have either an economic driver or political driver or geographic driver that allows that jurisdiction to maybe be further ahead in certain areas. There is a benefit of having those lessons learned for a smaller jurisdiction which has been very helpful.
Senator Mercer: Ms. Doyle, you mentioned a comprehensive white paper on autonomous vehicles, and that you shared it with the Deputy Minister of Transport in February of this year. Is that paper available?
Ms. Doyle: Yes.
Senator Mercer: I assume our researchers have it. If they haven't, perhaps you could share it with us.
At the very beginning, Ms. Fradette, you talked about road safety. I understand how that contributes to road safety and road efficiency for connected vehicles, particularly those in public transit. Some of us on the committee were in Edmonton and took a ride on a connected bus. We saw the infrastructure that they had in place to support that connectedness, so we sort of get that.
I have a hard time comprehending the safety aspect of autonomous vehicles. Yes, it's safe because it's programed to do everything right. I have to drive 35 minutes from my home to the airport in Halifax to get here every week, and the 35 minutes back every week. Then I drive around Ottawa sometimes, which is a little more dangerous than the little place I live in, in Nova Scotia.
I see some idiots on the road, and guess what? They're not programmed the same way that my autonomous vehicle might be. That is a factor. If we had all autonomous cars on the road, there would be no accidents because all the vehicles would know what they were doing and they could probably be communicating with each other, et cetera, but that is not the case.
We're not going to have that for many, many years, depending on the cost factor and the ability of the automobile manufacturers to respond to demand if the demand is there.
How do you see this contributing to road safety?
Ms. Fradette: I'm going to let my colleague provide a bit more insight into that question, but before I do I think it's important to note that the members of CCMTA are very focused on road safety. I think this is a really important piece of information: Canada has had one of the best records in the last 60 years in terms of improving road safety and the reduction of fatalities and serious injuries, even though there are additional drivers, additional kilometres travelled and additional vehicles on the road. I think the latest data was as of 2014.
There's a lot to be proud of but that doesn't mean we can lose focus of the need to remain vigilant. There has been a lot of discussion about the safety benefits of autonomous vehicles. I think that was certainly discussed in the working group.
Ms. Doyle: Driver error contributes between 85 and 90 per cent of all crashes across Canada, so we know that if technology can eliminate some of the errors humans are making behind the wheel it will drive those error-related collisions down.
We know that humans are fallible and they will continue to make mistakes regardless of how much training they have because we're easily distracted and because we're human. We have flaws.
The interesting thing about technology is algorithms can be built to reduce a lot of those issues. You are right that integration will be the tough part until we see a high volume of autonomous vehicles. Connected vehicles that will have that technology, understand or be able to determine the atmosphere or the environment around them is going to do and be able to react accordingly.
Engineers are programming algorithms into these vehicles. They are working on things like hand recognition, if a pedestrian is waving a car by even though the car has the right-of-way; siren recognition; ability to recognize the colour of lights on a vehicle; stop signs and all of the traffic control devices that they will see in any of these types of jurisdictions.
The amount of technology and algorithms being placed into these vehicles are for exactly that: to reduce the likelihood of crashes, which humans will continue to have.
Senator Mercer: I have a couple of quick questions. Canadians are asking themselves these questions as they see this debate go on. I'm trying to help them out, too.
You say that 85 to 90 per cent of fault in accidents is attributable to driver error. I buy that and I accept that as fact.
What happens when an autonomous vehicle has a collision with a regular vehicle driven by a person? A number of questions go there. Who does what? Who calls the police? What happens if the car with the driver leaves the scene? There may not be a driver in the other vehicle so what if they just leave?
It seems to me that they are no guarantees. Even if there's a person in the car, because we assume there's going to be a person in the driver's car even though they may not be driving, they may not be in a position to take command of the vehicle.
Have you analyzed that? Have you looked at, first, the safety factor; second, what the liability factor and, third, the frustration factor that will set in for the people involved on both sides?
Ms. Doyle: I'll touch on the insurance or the liability part first. In Canada, depending upon the jurisdictions, there are some that have public insurance and some that have private insurance. Depending upon what type of insurance there is in that jurisdiction, it will determine when a collision is deemed to be reportable.
The scenario that you're painting, senator, is one in which a vehicle is deployed and gets in a collision. There are a lot of unknowns. We have to admit there are a lot of unknowns right now because in Canada the only thing going on is the testing. There's an engineer in the vehicle testing the equipment. The general public isn't hopping inside the vehicle and going from point A to point B.
Senator Mercer: We've heard testimony talking about fleets of transport trucks going without drivers. There may be one supervising the fleet, but there may not be drivers in all the vehicles.
Ms. Doyle: Platooning, yes, that is a very real thing around the world right now.
I don't really have an answer for your question specific to fault or liability. The manufacturers are stating that the technology in the U.S. is considered the driver, so the vehicle itself would most likely have the ability to alert authorities. It would be kind of similar to OnStar and some of the technologies we have now. If all else fails, the other person, the other human, would be the one who may have to call.
Senator Mercer: The insurance factor is one that I find most interesting. I'm not a big fan of the insurance industry. I have a term for it: it's legalized extortion because you can't do anything without it. They've got you. God forbid that you actually make a claim. You bought insurance for the purpose of being insured, but once you've used it to make a claim they won't reinsure you or they will put up your fees tremendously.
Let's assume that everything goes along well and we get to the point where we're going to have a whole industry and a percentage of our vehicles that are going to be autonomous.
How do we as legislators and the public ensure that we're not being ripped off by the insurance sector through the fees that might be charged to insure an autonomous vehicle? If the option is, as you have said, that there's going to be better road safety because of these vehicles, shouldn't we see a discount in our insurance fees as opposed to what I would predict will be an increase?
Ms. Fradette: I'm not going to answer the direct question, but I wanted to highlight it.
Senator Mercer: You should be sitting here because we never answer questions, either.
Ms. Fradette: I don't want to give information that I'm not knowledgeable about, but I wanted to highlight the benefit of the fact that the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators has insurance partners at the table.
This means they are having the opportunity to work in harmony, to share and talk about these exact issues, and to ensure that Canadian citizens won't be disadvantaged when they're talking about the solutions associated with how they're going to deal with insurance: What are the regulation that need to be in place and what are the issues they're facing?
While I think it might be premature to determine their solutions, the opportunity to connect, collaborate and identify those issues has been something that the community at the CCMTA table has been having the opportunity to discuss.
Ms. Doyle: I don't have much more insight. I'm not an insurance expert. In some of the research we've done, as soon as there's a reduction in crashes there is less of an implication to insurance rates and insurance companies may then have to adjust rates accordingly.
Unfortunately I don't know a lot about the insurance industry and how they set those, so I can't offer much insight there.
Senator Galvez: I'm Senator Galvez, from Quebec.
In your speech, you see with very good eyes the coming of AVs from the environmental and the economical perspectives.
I assume, but you may comment further, these vehicles are to be powered with green electricity, or green power, to accommodate the multiple functions of individuals, common transport and maybe heavy freight. Do you have any idea what the percentage will be of these new vehicles? What percentage will go to individuals, common transport and heavyweight trucks?
How will infrastructure adapt to this new type of transportation? Will our asphalt and concrete highways be good enough to support this new type of transportation or do we need to make changes?
Ms. Doyle: May I clarify your first question? Are you talking about how much savings people will see?
Senator Galvez: No. You can tell me about the savings. I would be very interested to know that. Perhaps you can tell me: Will it be 100 per cent for one person driving in their car or for common transport?
Ms. Doyle: Right now there is a lot of speculation on this until there is heavy integration of autonomous vehicles. We know that a few of the companies that are looking at this are in the transportation networking industry, where there will be a fleet of vehicles and they will cluster or pool outside of downtown cores. You may be able to call one on your phone. It will come and take you from point A to point B, and then it will leave the downtown core to reduce congestion and stage somewhere else until it's needed to be used.
There is also speculation that a lot of millennials are getting driver's licences later in life. They don't see the need or they aren't going to afford a vehicle as people did years ago. They change the way cities are being built. Cities become more walkable. There is less parking. Lanes can become narrower.
Specific to your infrastructure question, lanes can be a lot narrower because there is less room for error and there are no issues with cyclists or pedestrians. It will take some time for infrastructure to catch up to what those vehicles allow for, but there is speculation that there will be fewer people owning their own vehicles because they have the ability to car share in a sharing economy.
Senator Galvez: You cannot tell me what percentage of this new wave of transportation will be directed to individuals versus common transport versus heavyweight transport of merchandise?
Ms. Doyle: I think it is all speculation right now, to be honest.
From talking to some commercial counterparts, the interesting thing about automation is that it sounds like in the commercial industry you can pick and choose what type of automation you would want, depending on what type of industry they are in.
If the commercial transport truck is in heavy traffic, they might want a traffic assist and no other automated technology on that vehicle. If they do a lot of highway driving, they might have something specific to freeway driving. The commercial industry will need a driver to secure the load and to fix mechanical issues, so for a long time there will still need to be a driver.
I mentioned group sharing or the transportation network. We did a survey two years ago, and there is no high uptake of people wanting to purchase highly autonomous or autonomous vehicles. Until there is general comfort around what the technology is and how safe it is, it will probably be more likely in the commercial and shared industry than the private passenger use.
Senator Bovey: I will show my complete ignorance right away. I am not going to admit to fear, but I feel a bit of Back to the Future to the mid-1980s when we were all beginning to buy our first home computers. Not many years before that there were not going to be computers at home.
My sense is that this is moving really quickly. We may have a dream as to where it is going, but we don't really have a sense as to how and where it is going. The wonderful witnesses who are coming and giving us their various perspectives have left me with a pretty big concern.
I have a copy of your white paper. I have to confess that I haven't read it thoroughly, but it is clear that you have been working on responsibility among various levels of government.
The House of Representatives in the United States has a bill requiring the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Federal Trade Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of Defence — it goes on and on and on — to get together to develop standards for these vehicles. We have also talked about cybersecurity.
As I put all this together, my simple question is this: Who is leading it? Who is pulling all these threads together with a sense of this is our path? The numbers of partners are huge and the implications are amazing. I guess I am feeling uneasy because I can't quite figure out who is pulling all this together. Are you? I hope somebody is.
Ms. Fradette: You have raised a really important point that there are multiple partners. Multiple partners will always be required because of the complexity of the issue. Transportation is going through transformation like we have never seen.
It requires partnerships with governments and industry. It requires partnerships with insurance agencies and regulatory bodies. It requires us to be open-minded about how we look at safety and safety benefits and the needs of citizens, and balance that with our regulatory obligations.
There isn't one partner. You raised cybersecurity. Industry has to be at the table, as do insurance, regulators, manufacturers and technology. There are multiple partners and there are also geographic, demographic, cultural and political differences within jurisdictions that will be driven by different needs within a jurisdiction. A jurisdiction like Ontario will be placed to have cross-border partners because of the need for harmonization within that jurisdiction.
There are multiple drivers and multiple partners. While we don't have all the answers in the case of the regulatory environment in our world, in our road safety vision, the benefit of our organization is that we are bringing the provinces, territories and federal government together to look at where our best positions are in terms of lessons learned: how we can partner with our American counterparts, how we can work within NHTSA and the USDOT. Transportation is integrated in North America. We are well placed in our community of road safety to be partnering with the right people.
It is a complex issue, so I am not sure there is one common answer to that.
Senator Bovey: As a quick follow-up, does that include issues of privacy, cybersecurity and all those other elements that we know will be core?
With all due respect I'm not sure what the right questions are to ask and I don't think I am alone.
Ms. Doyle: You are right. There are a lot of policy issues that are layered, depending upon which stakeholder is at the table. If you are looking at it as a motor transport administration issue, distracted driving obviously would change when the human in the vehicle is not required to function. The licensing and requirements of that person behind the wheel would change as well. Impairment might change because if they don't have care and control of the vehicle there are different implications there as well. That is kind of the safety lens.
You mentioned cybersecurity and insurance. Those partners also have different interests, different questions and policy issues from their point of view. It is disruptive and tough because there are so many different layered issues. It depends if we are talking about the testing of vehicles and then the eventual deployment of those vehicles.
Senator Bovey: I hope there is a master of something at some point, somewhere.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Thank you very much for your presentation, ladies. I will continue along the same lines as Senator Bovey. Transportation falls under the jurisdiction of all ten provinces and three territories. Infrastructure is under federal, provincial and municipal jurisdiction. There is joint American and Canadian infrastructure. The roads will be shared by traditional cars, autonomous vehicles and connected vehicles.
What I learned from our consultations is that no one is playing a leading role on this issue, not in government or in Canada. There is no coordination; everyone is working in silos. That is a perfect recipe for failure during such an important transition. Everyone agrees that the advent of autonomous vehicles will be as dramatic a change as the shift from horse and buggy to cars.
A Canadian organization has suggested that the government immediately appoint a minister responsible for the transition and the transformation. Transport Canada would not have sole responsibility for this. The suggestion is to appoint a minister responsible for the transition who would coordinate all actions, at the provincial and the federal levels. That person would be the main coordinator. The objective would be to make sure that we do not miss out on this transition and fall behind, so that Canada does not find itself stuck in the middle ages with regard to autonomous vehicles in 10 or 15 years as compared to other countries.
What do you think of this suggestion?
[English]
Ms. Doyle: Thank you for your question. It has been unorganized because of the different layers of policy issues and people coming at it from their own interests. That is an excellent observation.
In Canada, the Council of Deputy Ministers Responsible for Transportation and Highway Safety has a Policy Planning and Support Committee. I mentioned in my notes that they have a task force on autonomous vehicles and connected vehicles.
Currently in Canada there are quite a few organizations: TAC, the Transportation Association of Canada; CCMTA; and AAMVA, as we mentioned before. Those organizations are reporting up to the Deputy Ministers Responsible for Transportation and Safety.
I like your idea of there being one person in charge. I think it would add clarity and help bring partners around the table. We would be open, through CCMTA, to participate in any way.
Ms. Fradette: It is important to note because our members are provincial, territorial and the federal government in transportation departments we would take our direction from that group. An opportunity already exists in coordination through the PPSC committee that Wendy spoke about. Certainly any opportunity to collaborate further would be important and welcome.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: I was an executive in the Quebec government for 30 years. Forming a committee is the way to manage a problem for which no one is responsible. Based on my experience, I have no faith in committees whatsoever. The only way to take away an organization's responsibility is to create committees.
In my opinion, if the government does not create a pyramid structure to manage this issue, there will be many developments in other countries, even in the United States, and Canada could miss out.
[English]
Senator Runciman: You referenced semi-autonomous vehicles earlier. That is like the Tesla, I gather. The Tesla is semi-autonomous. There has to be a human sitting there, either behind the wheel or in the car. Are there licensed autonomous vehicles currently on the roads in any of the G7 countries?
Ms. Doyle: There are some states in the United States that have testing legislation. The last I counted, there were six. I believe one or two have some testing legislation in the works.
California is also working on deployment legislation, which means that you would be able to purchase a vehicle. There would not be an engineer in it. This technology is still in its testing phases. The California legislation specifically will allow for testing with the public.
I don't know of any major deployed vehicles aside from, as you mentioned, the Tesla which requires a human to take over evasive action should something happen. It is still semi-autonomous at this point.
Senator Runciman: What make are the cars that Uber is using in Arizona?
Ms. Doyle: I'm not sure.
Ms. Fradette: I commit to following up on your question about the semi-autonomous vehicles in the G7. I think Uber is testing in Pennsylvania, and I believe it is a Volvo.
Senator Runciman: We have had several questions about liability and insurance. I couldn't find it in my rush to get here, but I recently read an article where Great Britain has developed a policy to deal with this issue. Are you familiar with that?
Ms. Doyle: We are, yes.
Senator Runciman: Could you briefly expand on what they are doing?
Ms. Doyle: You are testing my memory a bit, senator. It is a pretty well-written policy and it is one that our working group has looked at it. It is pretty straight forward.
It is one of the first ones we saw specific to some of the policy issues we were referencing earlier. I don't have the details of it well enough in my mind to give you a Coles Notes version, unfortunately.
Senator Runciman: There was a comment in it with respect to the Tesla investigation of a death in 2016. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration made a comment that drivers have a responsibility to read the owner's manual, but manufacturers have to design with inattentive drivers in mind.
I don't know how many people around this table have read their driver's manual.
Senator Greene: I did.
Senator Runciman: There is one. That is a pretty good indication that should scare a lot of people.
You talked about millennials not buying cars, but it seems to me that this has to be in the future a component of licensing a driver going forward in the future. With the complexity of these systems, perhaps there has to be at least a basic understanding of the implications with respect to the operation of your vehicle, whatever they might be.
Do you see that as part of this process going forward?
Ms. Doyle: It is one of the questions we have talked about in exploring this. There are mixed reviews. Some people will compare it to cruise control. Someone may buy a new vehicle that has cruise control or automatic crash prevention or some sort of new technology. They hop in and don't really know how it works. They get a bit of information when they purchase the vehicle from the dealer and off they go. For the most part things work fine. Then there is the other side thinking that you need serious training and testing to understand the technology.
We have two sides of that spectrum where people believe you need dedicated testing and others say to trust the technology. Once it is manufactured in a vehicle to a specific standard, you need to trust that.
That is a very good question, senator, and not an easy one to tackle.
Senator Runciman: You mentioned in your white paper about the winter driving challenges. You mentioned snow and black ice, but you didn't mention Ottawa's potholes. Spring driving may also be a challenge for some of these technologies, I would suspect.
You also mentioned that public infrastructure will need to change. Could you elaborate a bit on that? With infrastructure, are you talking about bridges and roads? The majority of it is at the municipal level and all municipalities don't have the same fiscal capacity.
How do you see approaching that issue? What kinds of infrastructure are you talking about? What are the cost implications?
Ms. Fradette: Speaking on the experience of having observed what other jurisdictions do, and one of the jurisdictions in the United States is Virginia. It is quite progressive on the infrastructure side in terms on testing through Virginia Tech and in fact the whole community in various parts of that state. They focused on, for lack of a better description, the low-hanging fruit.
There are a lot of toll roads in that community. A lot of technology already exists to monitor vehicle traffic and vehicle behaviour through tolling. They have added on certain aspects of technology and certain aspects of their road infrastructure to start building on a technology of vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. I think that bodes well in terms of research and looking at those best practices.
There are other jurisdictions that may be further ahead. You may describe them as further ahead in terms of research or activities, but the benefit of being in Canada and monitoring the behaviours and activities that have occurred in other jurisdictions is we can learn from those jurisdictions.
As we're looking at the fact that you still have to build trust for the citizen and the consumer in using those vehicles, we have some opportunities to build on those lessons learned and not duplicate the mistakes made in some jurisdictions that were straight out of the gate.
A couple of our American partners said, "If we could put the toothpaste back in the tube we would.'' They were out of the gate. They made regulations and now they're trying to take a step back.
We're well positioned in Canada certainly in terms of the road safety and regulatory framework with our partners to monitor what has gone on in other jurisdictions and then make informed decisions for our Canadian citizens and our regulatory environment based on those lessons learned. I think that's an important point.
[Translation]
Senator Saint-Germain: I am concerned about planning. You pointed out quite rightly that the technology is evolving quickly. In some countries, it is available already, and you quite honestly said that there are still a lot of unknowns, especially as regards the social, economic and environmental impacts. Personally, I am more concerned about the social and economic impacts in this case than the environmental ones. I would like you to elaborate on your concerns in these two areas. Who, right now, is thinking, analyzing, and working on the potential social and economic impacts, and considering alternative or compensatory measures to address the negative impacts, such as on employment.
[English]
Ms. Doyle: I'll tackle the economic impacts first, if I may. In analyzing some of the issues specific to the economics, often people will wonder if commercial drivers will be out of work once these vehicles come in, especially when we look at the transportation networking companies: taxicabs, Ubers, Lyft, TappCars or whatever company is offering that type of networking service.
We know there are manufacturers specifically looking for the ride-share industry, but we also know there are job shortages there as well. If we look at the commercial industry, because of the complex task of moving those large loads it will take technology a long time to replace all the requirements a driver is required to do.
I mentioned earlier a few of the cargo securement and maintenance requirements on commercial vehicles. If the lights go out or brake issues happen, the human gets under and fixes that. That would still be an expectation because we still want to ensure they are safe vehicles on our roads, whether or not they are highly automated.
There's still a place for commercial drivers. The technology will be replacing a portion of the driving task. I believe it will be a ways before it will impact the work of commercial drivers. We also know there's a shortage in commercial drivers as well, so that's a benefit.
Senator Saint-Germain: Your answer is general. Do you have data to support your answer?
Ms. Doyle: Unfortunately, no. Most everything that we're looking at is general because there are not a lot of answers right now. It's based on speculations, expectations and assumptions of what industries will do: how much uptake they will assume or if they will prefer status quo and purchase commercial vehicles as they are now versus ones with automation.
Senator Saint-Germain: What about the social issues?
Ms. Fradette: While there are definitely social issues when you're looking at transportation networking companies and the broader economic issues, the reality is our particular mandate as our organization is narrower than that. It's very much focused on the regulatory framework of driver and vehicle registration and licensing.
On a personal note, we talk about moving to autonomous vehicles but we all have flown. We all have airplanes that can go on automatic pilot. This is a personal comment: There are very few of us that would get in an airplane without the pilot in the cockpit, even though they are available and presumably automated and safe.
Where will we land in the future in terms of transportation? It's fair to say that first and foremost the regulators will focus on the safety of citizens. The decisions around safety will be paramount when we're looking at regulatory framework.
[Translation]
Senator Saint-Germain: I understand your comparison with airplanes from a technological point of view, but as to the economic impacts, there were not a lot of planes that were not automatically piloted and had to be returned to the terminal. I wanted to make that distinction. Thank you.
[English]
Senator Mercer: My colleague Senator Bovey asked a question earlier about who is in charge. I'm not sure who is in charge either, but I know one of the reasons why we're here. We were asked to do this study by the Minister of Transport, and I compliment the minister and the government for taking an initiative that I respect.
You mentioned that millennials may not be buying cars, that they may be sharing them, et cetera. One of the major industries in the country, and particularly in this province, is the automobile industry, the manufacturer. Will the industry not price those vehicles so high that we will continue to buy cars which we need to drive ourselves?
I don't think that people at General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and Nissan, et cetera, are sitting around trying to figure out how they can sell fewer cars. The object of the game for them is to sell more cars.
I can see an industry leader that's not active in North America, Tata, a manufacturer of very small cars in India, being interested because of the volume that they could do.
I understand why the manufacturers are at the table with you. They have to know what's going on and will want to watch development to see which way it's going. If I were a shareholder in one of those companies, I wouldn't see what's in it for me. I don't know where the profit motive is unless I price the vehicles high enough that we can make a profit. Then again, why is the consumer going to buy it if the price is high?
Ms. Doyle: Although we're not able to comment on price points and what drives some of the manufacturers, we know that social responsibility is something that most manufacturers take quite seriously. If they can reduce how many fatalities and serious injuries happen in their vehicles, they're doing the right thing.
We also know from some of our discussions with major manufacturers that they understand that people like to drive. Those that want to drive will continue to buy vehicles for the driving task. There is a lot of debate as to whether there will be mass-produced driverless vehicles that you can purchase. Will they be the ride-share type where you can hail it from your phone but you can't actually purchase one? We don't actually know what that will look like going forward but it is something to monitor.
Senator Mercer: We are not unique in Canada, but there is a need to examine from the get-go if the vehicles can operate in more than one language. If this whole discussion is driven by the American industry, it will not be addressed. This country operates in two languages and many countries around the world operate in more than two languages. Our American friends seem hell-bent on trying to stick just to English, though they have a large Spanish-speaking population.
However, in your studies and in your activities have you factored in the need for the vehicles to be bilingual? If I buy a driverless vehicle I may own it for two years. I may sell it to my friend and neighbour who is a francophone. There are many different ethnic groups in Canada that speak their own languages. Is that being addressed as we move through the development?
Ms. Fradette: Our members monitor research that's occurring in other jurisdictions and one of the interesting aspects is the social behaviour of vehicles.
It's not just language. It's cultural. There are research studies happening across North America that vehicle manufacturers are leading. They are hiring anthropologists and people who study the behaviours of people to look at how autonomous vehicles would work in other countries where the rules of the road are slightly different or the languages are different.
I can't comment on where they are but I know that research is indeed happening via vehicle manufacturers and others.
Senator Mercer: You just reminded me of a taxi ride I took one time in Delhi, India. The taxi driver told us, "You need three things to be a good taxi driver in Delhi: good brakes, good horn and good luck.''
Senator Galvez: Do you have an idea of the time frame of this development? What are the stages and the phases? When will we see in Canada the first company to put autonomous cars and buses on the streets?
Ms. Doyle: Right now there's no real consensus of what that timeline looks like. If you ask the vehicle manufacturers, for a lot of them 2020 is kind of their magic year where they want to have a model in place, but that doesn't mean it's a model that you will be able to purchase.
The technology is still emerging and nobody really knows. There's also speculation on the regulator side that the policies and the legislation to allow them and to protect the public may not be in place, given the amount of time it takes to get some legislation through.
The timeline, people say, is anywhere from 10 to 15 years for highly automated vehicles that are taking away most of the driving task. For fully driverless, where you can actually possibly purchase one or hail one from somewhere, speculation is 15-plus years.
Senator Runciman: I have a brief question about cybersecurity. I saw your report on a review or a poll in Germany, where the majority of risk managers felt that cybersecurity was their major concern, apparently.
We had a Canadian agency before us responsible for security yesterday. Most of us were a little concerned about the lack of priority this issue has been given. They indicated from their perspective that a lack of resources wouldn't enable them to give it the priority it perhaps requires, and that I think you're concluding it does require.
One of the issues I raised was requiring manufacturers. I cited an example of digitalized e-verification being installed in cars. As I said yesterday, and I will repeat it, I'm not a big fan of government intervention to any extended degree in business, but this is an area where government has a real role to play in requiring certain things of manufacturers with respect to cybersecurity issues.
Do you have a view on that or opinion on that?
Ms. Doyle: The only thing I can offer is that the federal government is responsible for the Canada Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, the standard to which motor vehicles are manufactured and considered roadworthy.
Those are the standards where that information would have to be placed for the manufacturing of new vehicles. It gets complicated when people want to retrofit. If you're taking an older vehicle and retrofitting it with a technology that perhaps a third party would be able to offer, it adds further complication. The provinces and territories would then have to take that upon themselves because it's under their purview. It's not a newly manufactured vehicle within those standards.
Your comment is taken. I agree. I don't know if Allison has anything else to add on that.
Senator Runciman: In my case there's some confusion or maybe I'm misunderstanding your response. I'm talking about government requiring certain protections to be incorporated into the manufacture of new vehicles. I'm not talking about retrofitting or that sort of thing.
I'm talking about government playing a role and saying to manufacturers that this is a major concern to the security of the country and we require you to install this kind of technology to protect the public at large.
Ms. Fradette: For new vehicles that would rest currently with the federal government.
Senator Runciman: I understand that. I'm asking: Do you think this is something the government should be intervening with and requiring for manufacturers?
Ms. Doyle: Yes.
Senator Runciman: That's a role they should play.
Ms. Doyle: Yes.
Senator Runciman: Great, I agree with you.
The Deputy Chair: I would like to thank the representatives of the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators for their participation today.
There being no more questions, this meeting is adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)