CTAR AND BILL WATERS
When the federal government created the Canada Transportation Act Review (CTAR) Panel in the Spring of 1999 to carry out a statutorily-required review of Canada’s transport policies, the terms of its appointment required the Panel to complete its work within a calendar year. This deadline was in stark contrast to earlier transport reviews that had been carried out by Royal Commissions with the power of subpoena, non-fixed budgets and the right to take as much time as commissioners deemed necessary to complete their work. (Interestingly, the next scheduled transport policy review panel will be given 18 months to carry out its mandate.)
Because of the limited time the CTAR Panel was given, it had to hit the ground running. The disparate group that had been appointed to the Panel quickly found a modest “home” at the corner of McLaren and Elgin Streets, above a pool hall and a DQ. The Panel then made two momentous decisions: it would try to have hearings in every province and territory in Canada and it would use an open and transparent process that no federal Royal Commission or Panel had tried before. This process required every presentation made to the Panel, and much of the Panel’s work, to be posted immediately on the Internet so that everyone in Canada with an interest in what the Panel was doing would know what was happening, in real time. This latter move was subsequently copied by other commissions. Importantly, it allowed the Panel to work much more efficiently and to meet the strict deadlines it had been given.
As the Panel’s work moved along, it quickly became apparent that Bill Waters would be one of the principal intellectual “engines” of all we were attempting to do. Bill’s deep distrust of oligopoly and monopoly encouraged the Panel to try and find innovative ideas that would foster more competition in modes of transport that were not natural hotbeds of competitive forces. Bill also convinced the Panel that to do our study without considering roads --- the main means of transport in Canada --- would be tantamount to performing Hamlet without the prince. So, despite it being a technical violation of our mandate, we plunged into the (provincial) policy and patronage swamp and studied how roads were built and maintained in Canada. In the process of doing this, the Panel wrote perhaps the most outstanding chapter of its Report, namely, “Chapter 10 --- Paying for Roads”. Bill was crucial in conceiving and writing that chapter, one that still resonates and still awaits inevitable implementation as
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Canada’s transport infrastructure continues to deteriorate and as governments have less and less money to spend on this infrastructure.
The thorny issue of how to foster railway competition in a vast country with only two large railway companies, and many short lines, challenged a long succession of Royal Commissions --- seven in the 20th century! --- in Canada. The simple and perennial question that haunted our Panel was that of whether to recommend more “open access” to Canada’s railway system. Prairie farmers and major resource producers, “captive” to one or other of the railways, historically had wanted rail tracks to be open to any train operator for regulated fees that covered only the additional costs they imposed on the rail track owner. On the other hand, the railway companies insisted that any such access should include significant compensation for their invested capital. Again, Bill’s wisdom led us to a compromise that recommended better access to Canada’s rail lines that did not impair the economics of rail maintenance.
Because, in 1999-2000, there was a looming threat of a takeover of one of Canada’s large railway companies either by the other Canadian railway or a large American one, the Panel spent time looking at how mergers in the railway sector should be handled. The solution the Panel recommended has not yet been adopted by government, and the merger threat has not materialized to date in the rail sector. But the federal government might well have found the Panel’s principles helpful when faced with the thorny takeovers of a part of Macdonald-Dettwiler and all of Potash Corporation of Canada. Again, Bill’s influence in this chapter was significant.
Bill was a stickler for good writing. His constant push for clear writing in the Panel’s Report caused him to re-write and edit key portions of our work. As a result, the CTAR Report today, in 2010, still is a joy to read, and possesses a clarity and directness that even George Orwell might appreciate. And Bill was proud, as we all were, that we did not spend all the money that had been allotted by government to the Panel for its work.
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The Panel returned hundreds of thousands of dollars to the federal treasury at the end of its mandate, not a usual occurrence in the world of commissions and panels.
When the Panel crossed the “finish line” in late June of 2000, all of us --- especially Bill --- agreed the year of creatively contemplating Canada’s key transport issues had been the best year of our policy lives. Before his sudden death, Bill talked with me and others about mounting a retrospective conference on our Report on what we did right and wrong. I trust such an event will take place in 2011 in Bill’s name and his honour. We will miss him terribly at any retrospective conference and know that, at it, he would modestly try to downplay his central role is what may be the best report ever written on Canada’s transport policies.
Brian Flemming, CM, QC
Chairman, CTAR Panel, 1999-2000,
Halifax, Nova Scotia
8 December 2010
My tribute to Bill Waters
ReplyDeleteAs one of the many honoured to be counted among Bill’s friends, I would like to offer condolences from my wife Alison and myself to Joanne and all the family. We were deeply shocked by Bill’s untimely death, and saddened that Bill won’t be able to enjoy more of all those thing he loved to do, now that he was finally tearing himself from his desk.
I knew of Bill’s work from the time I came to Canada and began working with Transport Canada in the mid-70’s, and picked his brains on many an occasion. Then it was my great privilege to work directly with Bill during the Canada Transportation Act Review. Brian Flemming’s message conveys the importance of Bill’s contribution to the Review, and the impression he made on his colleagues on the Panel. For me, as a member of the Panel’s staff, the most satisfying part of the work was to try with Bill to turn principles into policy options – a foolhardy delusion, say the cynics – but Bill wasn’t one of the cynics. Many was the long night on the road during the Panel’s consultations when we chewed things over in some darkening lobby bar. Then Bill would send me his written notes and suggestions of solutions – his “thots” as he called them – quickly written, but with lots of gems. I’ve still got an extensive file of them. Even in these private chats, Bill would get swept up in solving the technical problems, and become the professor, pointing with a chalkless forefinger and thumb as if at an imaginary blackboard as he sought a precise solution.
After the Review, I continued to chat frequently with Bill, to work with him occasionally after I left Transport Canada in 2005, and to marvel still at how involved he was professionally. He continued particularly to pour out papers for CTRF, of which he was such a strong supporter, and for few weeks before he died was badgering me to join him in a paper for next year’s CTRF. It was to be on one of his favourite arcane subjects – differential pricing of rail freight – of which I know he had a profound understanding, certainly profound enough that he didn’t need me. But he remembered one of those discussions we’d had, prior to one of his “thots”, and, as ever, was generously offering to let me share in work that would have been almost entirely his.
John Lawson
Ex-Director, Economic Analysis & research, Transport Canada, and Co-Director of Research, Canada Transportation Act Review, 1999-2000