Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-209.
I am listening to members of the Bloc Quebecois, who want tax deductions for public transportation. They talk of greenhouse gases and pollution. When people drive behind a bus and it sends a blast of air into their car, that is not very healthy.
My riding of Verdun—Saint-Henri—Saint-Paul—Pointe Saint-Charles is located near the Champlain bridge. While it takes the member for Laval 45 minutes on the autoroute to reach Laval, it takes an hour and a half to cross the Champlain bridge. Members can imagine how much greenhouse gas a body takes in there.
Before a tax credit is given, a proper public transportation system is needed. The member for Jonquière wants a tax credit, but I think we need light, rapid and pollution free, meaning electric, public transit to eliminate the greenhouse gases we get daily.
We have a light train project that starts at autoroute 30 and goes downtown; it will eliminate the greenhouse gases the buses emit. We have Mr. Chevrette's bill to restructure public transit. The member for Jonquière must have heard Mr. Chevrette say light trains were needed throughout Quebec.
Monorails, light, quiet and pollution free trains, exist throughout the world. We in Quebec are 20 years behind in public transit. It is therefore time to do something. It is time for new projects that will eliminate greenhouse gases.
Before tax credits are given, we must set up modern public transit, which the public will want to use, as is the case around the world.
When the Deux-Montagnes trains were put on the rail again, the number of cars had to be doubled. Imagine, twice as many cars had to be put on the commuter trains to Montreal. Let us not forget that there is still the problem of greenhouse gases.
Imagine if tomorrow we could have a public, electric, light rail transit system which could move about Quebec without noise and without pollution, like the one that is going to be put in using the Champlain bridge structure to carry commuters downtown. There ought to be another one, which would go east-west under boulevard Métropolitain, taking in Pie-IX, Henri-Bourassa, Avenue du Parc, joining Mirabel and Dorval, Dorval and downtown. Can we imagine what the Quebec of the future would be like?
In my opinion, before we start thinking about tax credits it is very important to invest in public transit in Quebec. In this connection, Mr. Chevrette has undertaken a magnificent initiative for improving mass transit, and I congratulate him on it. He did not increase the number of buses and cars by putting in more bridges. The commission looking into public transit said no to the construction of new bridges, and thus yes to modern noise and pollution free, mass transit, electric transportation with no greenhouse gas emissions.
A bill such as the one we have before us today ought to focus more on a mass transit system that would be free of greenhouse gas emissions.
I heard the hon. member for Surrey Centre say earlier that the Liberals had no project. I regret to inform him that had he looked at our red book, if he had read it, he would know that it contains a paragraph referring to the need to encourage public transportation and those who are interested in creating modern noise free and pollution free transportation so that greenhouse gas emissions may be eliminated.