Lou Smyrlis

There’s a funny thing about numbers: they often prove a double edged sword.

In the hands of politicians they can be used to confuse issues and add seeming credibility to the most preposterous of ideas. In the hands of an auditor, they can be used to bring a government to account.

That’s exactly what happened in Ottawa this week when the federal environment commissioner released an audit of various government programs put in place to reduce air emissions. Considering transportation’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions (25% of the total contributions) our industry is certain to come under increased scrutiny in the future so environment auditor Scott Vaughn’s scathing audit of existing programs is something in which transportation professionals and stakeholders should take a keen interest.

In a nutshell, Vaughn’s audit found that the Conservative government has no way to track the environmental benefits of two programs it claimed would contribute to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, the Conservatives pushed through a transit tax credit back in 2006 they claimed would cut emissions by 220,000 tonnes per year. Yet Vaughn concludes that in fact this tax credit will in fact lead “lead to negligible reductions” based on the government’s own estimates. From their initial claim of a reduction of 220,000 tonnes each year from 2008 to 2012, the Conservatives had to drastically downgrade their own estimates of average annual reduction to 35,000 tonnes.

Just as bad, the means necessary to properly measure the actual impact of the tax credit have yet to be created.

The environment commissioner’s audit also found “no scientific basis” for the government’s claim that a $1.5 billion climate-change fund for the provinces will result in an 80-megatonne cut in emissions.

How can the government possibly be that far off in their estimates? Can you imagine how safe your job would be if your estimates of future growth or costs or whatever were that far off?

It’s not Vaughn’s job to comment on what he thinks caused such as shameful difference between government estimates and reality. But I’ll take a stab at it. Perhaps accuracy was not a major consideration when the Conservatives began touting the public transit tax credit? Perhaps it was politically expedient for a party that back in 2006 was looking to attract more of the urban vote and recognized spending on transit as a time-proven way to entice urban voters.

But the end result is more government waste and a loss of credibility for the government’s environment plans at a critical time.

Remember, this is the same party that during the debate a couple of years ago over whether Canada should start living up to its Kyoto commitments produced an analysis that claimed that by 2009, over 275,000 Canadians would lose their jobs, electricity bills would jump by 50% after 2010, prices at the pump would shoot up by 60%, and natural gas prices to heat homes would double, if they had to meet their Kyoto Accord targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is a government used to playing loose with numbers when it wants to.

Lest you think this another stab at the Conservatives (a party for which I readily admit to having worked for on a volunteer basis in the past but which I have come to loathe in recent years) I’m not sure the Liberals would have done much better. The reality is that despite three national emission reduction “plans” – “wishful thinking” would be a more appropriate word considering all the effort that went into them – dating all the way back to Jean Chretien’s Liberal government and Brian Mulroney’s Conservative government, all we’ve done over the past 20 years is watch our GHG emissions climb relentlessly. Overall, we are on track to be about 30% above the Kyoto Protocol target for 2010.

Yes, our booming economy (remember those days?) was part of the reason why for the increase in GHG emssions, but Ottawa’s failure to lead was also a significant contributor to the mess we are in. And leadership and accountability go hand in hand.

As the environment commissioner noted in his report: “Canadians expect the government to tackle environmental degradation. The government needs to know what works, what doesn’t and why.”

His comments are only common sense. An issue as important as the environment should not be politicized. Both the public and the transportation industry stakeholders who will be feeling the pain deserve to know the government knows what it’s doing rather than cooking up numbers for political gain.

This is a blog I never thought I would have to write.

I’ve just come back from celebrating my son’s 10th birthday to horrible news; the kind that every parent fears but can easily fool himself into thinking happens only to strangers, to people you only hear about on the news.

But the sad reality is that tragedy has hit my family and I am asking the transportation industry for its help.

Just a little over a week ago my niece, Megan Cherry, was a teenager showing a world of promise for the future. She was a star soccer player with a scholarship waiting for her at Iowa State University. Now she’s on the missing persons list, listed as an endangered runaway.

Her family, friends, local police and the FBI have been searching frantically for her but with absolutely no results.

I know the transportation professionals who read our publications and this blog travel extensively and see a lot of things while on the road. I hope I can lean on your eyes and ears in the search for Megan Cherry.

Megan is a bright teenager but still naïve in many aspects of the world and may have fallen in with the wrong crowd. Her behavior had been troubling of late and the family is very fearful for her safety.

It was on Friday February 6th that something went terribly wrong. At some point after being dropped off at her school, Allen High School in Allen, Texas, that morning, Megan came back home, packed some of her belongings, and took a family car that was parked in the front of her home. She has not been heard from since.

Yet she had just $30 on her that day. So where could she have gone? Why has she remained out of touch despite having a mobile phone? Is she in danger? Those are the kinds of questions torturing her parents and her family right now. Anyone with a child can imagine what they’re going through. It is now 10 days since her disappearance.

Megan’s mobile phone has been switched off since February 6th, a strange occurrence in itself considering how attached she was to her phone. Police questioning of her friends has yielded little.

Tall, good looking and athletic she would stand out in a crowd. She has black hair with a reddish-golden streak in her bangs. She stands 5’ 10” (178 cm) and weighs 165 lbs with an athletic build. Her ears are pierced and she has a scar on her right ankle.

She may be traveling in a silver 2001 Ford Taurus with Texas license plates JNM 715. It has a dent along the passenger door.

Pictures and more information about Megan Cherry can be found at the link below.

Anyone who sees Megan Cherry or has any information about her whereabouts, please contact:

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
1-800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST) or the Allen, Texas Police Department at 1-214-509-4322

I thank you all for your understanding and help. The slightest tip could lead to a happy ending of having Megan reunited with her family.

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PubCaseSearchServlet?act=viewPoster&caseNum=1115831&orgPrefix=NCMC&searchLang=en_US

As many of you know a few days ago I came back from the joyous celebrating of my son’s 10th birthday to the horrible news that my 16-year-old niece, Megan Cherry, was on the missing persons list, listed as an endangered runaway down in Texas.

Her family, friends, local police and the FBI were searching frantically for her but with absolutely no results. As you can appreciate the whole family was worried sick, all sorts of terrible things going through their mind. This was so out of character for Megan, who was a talented teenager showing a world of promise.

Soon as I heard the sad news, I wrote a blog asking for the transportation industry’s help in looking for Megan.

Well, earlier tonight I received the news we have all been praying for. Megan was found and she is safe.

I want to thank all the transportation professionals who e-mailed me with their support and the many others who offered to help by posting my blog on their Facebook page. Our whole family has been so touched by your kindness in this most difficult of times.

For Megan and her family, the next few weeks will I’m sure involve the important processes of acceptance, forgiveness, reconnecting and emotional growth.

But although this particular chapter in Megan’s story has that happy ending we had all been praying for, I don’t want this story to end here. What happened to Megan and her family has brought the plight of parents whose children have gone missing into much sharper focus for me. It has also reasserted my belief that the transportation industry can have a very positive role to play in helping find missing children.

Over the next few weeks I will be looking into how this Web site and our publications can help raise awareness about missing children and use the “eyes and ears” of our transportation professionals to create more happy endings.

Our annual focus on motor carriers in this month's issue places the spotlight on a much troubled industry. There’s no way to hide the troubles facing trucking companies these days.

The six executives who candidly share their thoughts about how road transport will be reshaped during the economic downturn in this month’s cover story certainly harbor no illusions about the tough road ahead.

US GDP contracted 3.8% in the fourth quarter of 08, which was the worst since the first quarter of 1982. In 2008 as a whole, the US GDP grew 1.3%, however if you remove the strong build-up of business inventory from the equation, GDP actually shrunk 5.1%. The Canadian economy is not experiencing the deep issues wreaking havoc on businesses south of the border but we all know the Canadian economy can’t long escape US reality.

Truck tonnage in the US plunged 11.1% in December, which is the largest month-to-month decline since April, 1994 when unionized LTL truckers were on strike. In a recent Webinar, Noel Perry, managing director and senior consultant with FTR Consulting Group, said the US trucking industry has actually been experiencing a freight recession for nearly three years. Our own data has shown that freight volumes and freight rates in Canada have been on the decline (from an admittedly sharp increase starting in 2003 and peaking by 2005). Forty three percent of Canadian motor carriers expect their freight volumes to drop below their already less than spectacular volumes in 2008.

FTR Associates maintains a Trucking Conditions Index which measures many variables that impact the health of the trucking industry. It has fallen to “unprecedented negative numbers,” according to Perry. He compares today’s freight conditions in the US to the last big recession in 1982. And downward pressure on rates is certain to continue. As Perry explained, a huge reduction in fuel surcharges during the fourth quarter gave shippers something to declare victory over but traffic managers are under intense pressure to cut costs and he anticipates the “worst price pressure that fleets have felt in our lifetime.” While our own Canadian data doesn’t paint such a gloomy picture, it does also indicate downward pressure on truck rates. While 47% expect no improvement in their rates and 24% expect rate drops, according to our research.

As a result, Perry anticipates the number of US fleet bankruptcies to “continue and accelerate” over the remainder of 2009 and even into 2010.

And all that is ominous for the share pricing of the continent’s prominent trucking providers. In November, during a session on economic realities I chaired for CITT in Winnipeg, David Newman a senior vice president and equity research analyst with National Bank Financial revealed a sobering comparison. By mid October the value of trucking companies had declined by 32.5%, which is pretty well spot on with what happened back during the 1982 recession.

But as bad as this may be, it can get worse. Many economists believe this will be the worst recession the North American has faced since the Great Depression. That could place the economic pain to be felt on par with what happened back in 1973-75, perhaps worse. And during 1973-75, trucking shares fell an average of 45.4%.

Over the past few months many commenting on the troubles in the motor carrier industry, myself included, have spoken of the cleansing to come; that the current difficulties would rid the industry of those operators who never did adopt successful business strategies and relied on low prices rather than superior service to attract clients. But in his comments on the short term future of the trucking industry Ray Haight, executive director of MacKinnon Transport and the executive director of the Truckload Carriers Association, believes differently. He believes that during this recession we will lose some of the worst operators but also some of the best.

I have a lot of respect for Ray, and I’m beginning to think he’s right.

What that means for shippers is that they will have to be vigilant about the viability of their carriers during the next year and prepared for what will come once the recession draws to a close.

If today’s freight conditions are similar to those experienced in the previous two deep recessions they will be followed by a rapid recovery.

Motor carriers have been shedding a good deal of capacity of late. For example, the Ontario Trucking Association’s latest poll of its members found that 45% believed capacity has been reduced in their segment and 53% said they expect to see further capacity reductions over the next six months. Sixty-seven per cent of respondents said they would not be adding tractors to their fleet and 23% said they’d reduce their fleet size.

Such capacity shrinkages may place considerable pressure on trucking capacity if the eventual recovery is a fast one.

WORTH REPEATING

“There is a connection between the punch line and the bottom line.”
Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher,
The Levity Effect