Confusion in the air over province’s electric bus report

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This article was published 19/03/2018 (2222 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s sustainable development minister appears to have taken a wrong turn.

On Friday, Rochelle Squires said the provincial government was holding off on announcing concrete plans for potentially electrifying Winnipeg Transit while awaiting the results of a pilot project report.

On Monday, the Free Press obtained a copy of the 12-page report — entitled “The Future is Ahead of You: Battery-Electric Bus Zero Emissions” — and it looks to have been finalized 20 months ago.

Dated July 2016 (only a few months after the government led by Premier Brian Pallister took office), the report looks at the results of introducing four electric buses into Winnipeg Transit’s fleet in 2014 — ultimately recommending a three-step plan to swap out a portion of the city’s diesel buses for electric ones.

After news broke last week the province’s newly minted carbon tax would apply to public transportation, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1505 president Aleem Chaudhary called out the decision, saying it was clear the government didn’t care about public transit. In particular, he highlighted the province had yet to commit funding for the electrification of the city’s diesel bus fleet.

Squires responded to those comments during a media scrum on Friday, saying said the province remained interested in pursuing electrification and discussed the impact the carbon tax will have on Winnipeg Transit.

“Electrification of transit is certainly an area that we’re very interested in. I’m waiting for the finishing touches to be put on this task force report that is a result of the first pilot that we had done,” Squires said.

“And we’re looking forward to getting that report and releasing it to the public, which talks about the pilot and the successes of that pilot and some recommendations on next steps. So once I have that report, we’re going to be able to make some decisions.”

When pressed Monday on her comments, and the question of whether the government has been sitting on the document for 20 months, Squires said she wasn’t sure when the report had been completed, adding it languished as a draft for a long time.

“The timeline of the report, I’m not exactly certain of. I know that it’s been completed for a while… I couldn’t confirm the timeline of when that report was completed. I’ve seen draft versions of the report as early as January of this year. I saw a draft of that report last week,” the minister said.

When asked if the report — the result of the provincial government and City of Winnipeg commissioning a task force in November 2015 to look into the success of the 2014 pilot project — had been completed in 2016, Squires said she didn’t believe so. Although she offered no explanation for why it would be dated as such if it had only recently been finalized.

When asked if her comments on Friday would lead one to believe she had yet to see the report, Squires said: “I said last week I wouldn’t want to preclude the outcome of the report until it was released. It was completed, but it wasn’t released.”

Squires said she had been unsure at the time whether the report was a finalized version or just a draft.

“What I said on Friday is that we were looking forward to releasing the report publicly. It had not been released publicly. I have seen draft versions of this report… A draft is not a final report,” the minister said.

Chaudhary said Monday he was shocked to hear of the existence of the report. The labour leader said he’d yet to see a copy, and the province still hadn’t sought consultation from the union.

“We were under the impression there was no report yet. That’s what we were told. Now we’re just wondering: what else is in the background? What are they hiding, or what are they keeping secret from us?” he said. “All we want to know is what their plans are. And if they’ll have any consultation at all with transit or the union itself.”

Despite the confusion over the timeline of the pilot project report, Squires said Monday, “climate change mitigation is a huge priority for this government” and she highlighted other initiatives the province has focused on, including the decision to sign onto Ottawa’s climate change action plan in February.

Thanks to that decision, Manitoba is now eligible for $67 million in federal funding through the Low Carbon Economy Leadership Fund.

Squires wouldn’t say whether some of that funding would be earmarked for moving forward on electrifying Winnipeg Transit’s bus fleet.

ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @rk_thorpe