TORONTO — An advocacy group is raising concerns about Air Canada’s participation in a bid for rail services.
Transport Action Canada, which advocates for passengers and sustainable transport, has contacted Public Services and Procurement Canada following news that Air Canada has joined a High Frequency Rail (HFR) bid for a multi-decade operating concession for all VIA Rail’s Quebec-Windsor train services.
The bid was made by Cadence consortium, led by CDPQinfra. Along with Air Canada, French government-owned SNCF Voyageurs also joined by the bid ahead of the July 24 deadline.
According to Transport Action Canada, if Cadence is selected as the winning consortium and becomes the “Private Development Partner” for HFR by the end of the year, the handover of train and HFR services to the private sector would happen some time during the multi-year period.
The group contacted Public Services and Procurement Canada about the following concerns:
- Rail-air codeshares should be available equally to all airlines flying into Canada’s international airports. If one airline owns part of the rail service, safeguards would be needed to ensure fairness.
- The government may have given Air Canada access to HFR project data that provides competitive advantages over other airlines and VIA Rail.
- Allowing one of three shortlisted consortia to reveal major changes in its composition only when it was too late for the others to respond was unfair.
- Various requests for information about High Frequency Rail – including taxpayer-funded studies that would have enabled well-informed public discussion – were rebuffed or heavily redacted over the past decade on the grounds of commercial sensitivity. Either the previous redactions were spurious, or sensitive information has now been made available to a current competitor.
Transport Action Canada says it received a response from Public Services and Procurement Canada on Aug. 2, which stated that “an analysis conducted by Transport Canada and Public Services and Procurement Canada concluded that the addition of Air Canada meets the requirements specified in the procurement documents.” The response also provided assurances that the government intends to carefully scrutinise the agreements drafted in the co-development process to “ensure that the project interacts with different modes of transportation in a manner structured to ensure fair, open and level competition among the entities in other transportation sectors.”
However, as Transport Action Canada notes, the response did not address concerns about lack of transparency or access to competitive information. Air Canada and Cadence were unable to offer further clarification, citing procurement rules, it added.
“It is crucial that Public Services and Procurement Canada ensure that the process is fully transparent and beyond reproach, especially important for the procurement of a project of this scale and that is vitally important to Canada’s future productivity and sustainable prosperity,” said Transport Action Canada on its website.
“We urge Air Canada to avoid any further perception of conflict of interest by stepping back from directly competing in the procurement and indicating its willingness to work with VIA Rail and the future High Frequency Rail service whatever the outcome,” the group added.
Travelweek reached out to Air Canada for comment but did not hear back by press time. Further details will be reported as they become available.
