Quebec City, Quebec
June 11, 2012
Check against delivery
Thank you for that introduction. And a happy 15th birthday to ITS Canada.
I’m very pleased to be here to help mark this important milestone and thank you for your ongoing partnership with Transport Canada.
I am also honoured to welcome Minister Joshi, the Indian Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, to Quebec City on the occasion of this conference.
Minister Joshi and I met this morning to discuss strengthening Canada-India relations, and I am pleased to tell you that we have agreed to advance bilateral cooperation in the area of road transportation.
ITS are clear examples of innovation in action. New and emerging technologies provide exciting solutions to help people and goods move from place to place more quickly, efficiently, safely and sustainably.
I’m proud to say that the Government of Canada has a long-standing relationship with ITS Canada. We’ve been working together since 1997, when your organization approached my department seeking a sponsor.
You got it. And in 1999, Transport Canada unveiled its ITS strategy at the 6th World Congress on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
You have been a key partner in getting the ITS message out to a broader audience, making more people aware of these technologies and their value to the economy.
We look forward with enthusiasm to the next 15 years and beyond as ITS drives greater connectivity and revolutionizes the entire transportation system.
One of -- if not the most prominent example of ITS -- is the driverless automobile.
I realize we are years away from highways filled with driverless cars, but I am greatly impressed by the progress in collision avoidance.
I’m sure many Canadians who saw the CBC piece on the “Future of Vehicle Safety” were also impressed.
If they were like me, they were on the edge of their seats as two vehicles raced toward a collision.
Then, just before colliding, on-board sensors alerted the “car” to stop itself.
It was too close for comfort.
But it was a graphic demonstration of what the technology can do — and how much we need it.
Of course, ITS is about more than helping people avoid accidents or parallel park.
Still, driving is a huge part of people’s lives, and making it safer is something that we have long strived for.
I note that our friends at ITS America had their annual conference in May.
The event featured a demonstration of connected vehicle technology in a dozen vehicles from different manufacturers.
While the connected vehicle gets the most attention, there are many other important and productive applications already at work.
All over the world, governments are turning to ITS as a cost-effective way to ease congestion and speed the movement of people and goods.
We know we can’t just build our way out of congestion problems — we must innovate.
Congestion wastes time and money, it affects the environment, and it impacts our quality of life.
Canada shares these challenges and the ambition to improve the efficiency of our transportation system. Our economy depends on it.
We also have the additional challenge of keeping the world’s longest undefended border secure, while keeping trade moving.
Last month, I was in Leipzig, Germany at the International Transport Forum, talking about seamless connectivity across borders.
Border delays are still too long all over the world, and that costs money and slows trade.
To overcome these delays, cross-border co-operation and inter-agency coordination are crucial to success.
The Canada-U.S. effort to make our border more secure following 9/11 is viewed as a success, because we tightened security while keeping cross-border traffic moving.
Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement, and our government looks forward to working with our U.S. partners to use ITS to streamline this traffic and further reduce border wait times.
But the use of intelligence in transportation goes beyond technology to the design of the networks.
Making a complex system with independent, moving parts work efficiently requires coordination.
We can coordinate in many ways, but it helps to have a leader — someone to drive it.
We asked ourselves: What’s the best way for the Government of Canada to promote greater collaboration among transportation stakeholders?
Our answer was to take the lead — to involve all levels of government and the private sector and implement a national plan for strategic gateways and trade corridors.
Canada has three major gateways and trade corridors — the Atlantic Gateway, the Continental Gateway, and the Asia Pacific Gateway.
They support international trade by creating more efficient, reliable and seamless transportation systems.
In developing these gateways, we didn’t focus on just one transportation mode, but on an integrated system of modes and infrastructure.
To give an idea of the scope of these systems, the Asia Pacific Gateway transports goods from the Asia-Pacific region through British Columbia ports to road and rail systems across Western Canada and south to the U.S. mid-West.
Similarly, for the Atlantic and Continental gateways we have goods arriving from Europe and Asia at the ports of Halifax or Montreal and moved by rail and truck to Toronto and onward to Chicago.
So we start with intelligent architecture; then we add intelligent technology.
We believe that ITS can make our gateways, corridors and border crossings even more efficient.
That’s why we’ve been working on an initiative that we call the “ITS Smart Corridor.”
A “Smart Corridor” will use new and emerging technologies to expedite the movement of goods through the corridor.
The idea is to coordinate the systems technology used by all public and private-sector transportation stakeholders in the corridor, and to make it as integrated, intelligent and interoperable as possible.
Our goals are: reduced trip and dwell times, less uncertainty and variability in travel times; and less paperwork.
Let me emphasize that, in order for the Smart Corridor to be successful, it will require a lot of collaboration with all interested players – provinces, municipalities, terminal operators, bridge operators, transit authorities and many others.
It will also require a strong emphasis on moving towards greater integration of the technology systems these players operate.
A real example of this level of collaboration and integration is our work on a Smart Corridor Concept of Operations for Ontario and Quebec.
This is a joint undertaking by Transport Canada, le ministère des Transports du Québec, and the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario.
It focuses on the transportation corridor that runs from Quebec City to Windsor and south to the international border.
Many ideas are emerging from this work that will see greater integration of systems for traffic management, more timely road information for travellers and better coordination of systems for enforcing commercial vehicle weights and dimensions.
We are committed to building this technology into our transportation system for four reasons:
One, we believe we can achieve significant improvements in efficiency — almost immediately.
Two, the U.S. is moving forward on ITS, and we need to ensure our systems align.
We are very excited about U.S. efforts on safety, particularly the technology’s potential to reduce non-alcohol related traffic accidents by up to 80 per cent.
Three, ITS has enormous job-creation potential.
Growing demand for this technology in Canada and for export will create high-quality jobs in your industry, and that’s good for Canada.
Many of the companies represented here today are world leaders in this field, and we believe you will be leaders in job creation as well.
And four, relative to hard infrastructure like bridges, highways, rail, ports facilities, ITS can deliver significant benefits at much lower cost.
Since 2006, our government has made significant investments in much-needed transportation infrastructure. And we will continue to do so.
We are working to develop Canada’s next long-term infrastructure plan for the future – and we will have a place for new technology and innovation in our plan.
Now, and looking to the future, we can see exciting new opportunities from ITS that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars rather than hundreds of millions.
These benefits include better coordinated and more efficient transportation systems; less traffic congestion and shorter border wait times; and greater fuel efficiency and reduced idling.
In recognition of the exceptional benefits of ITS, Minister Joshi and I will soon sign a Memorandum of Understanding between India and Canada on cooperation to advance our shared goals of developing and promoting safe, efficient, cost effective and integrated road transportation systems.
In signing this , we agree to share information and best practices on highway development and management, road safety, and the application of ITS technologies to road transportation.
This will also support the ambitious economic growth objectives of both our countries. And, in the spirit of working together, an important part of this agreement will be facilitating partnership between key private sector stakeholders – such as yourselves. This is about new opportunities.
You can see we are ambitious, and our government intends to take full advantage of the technology the ITS industry develops.
It’s an exciting time to be involved in transportation.
I urge you to join with us this year, next year and for another 15 years to transform transportation — in Canada and the world.
We can barely imagine where this technology will take us.
Thank you.
