Thank you, sir.
Mr. Chair and honourable committee members, my name is Richard Oram. I'm the founder of the Commuter Check company, which is owned by Accor Services, a Paris-based company.
In addition to similar programs worldwide, Accor provides public transport benefits—transit benefits, as we call them—or employer-based incentives for public transit use. We operate these for over 350,000 public transport users and 8,000 United States employers. Accor operates vouchers, online, and other transit benefit plans serving every significant transit market in the United States.
For the brief that we submitted to your committee in August, I'm here to propose that the federal government allow, first, employees to purchase transit passes, single tickets, or transit vouchers good for passage or tickets, as a pre-tax payroll deduction.
The second thing is to allow transit media—passes, tickets, or vouchers—to be provided by employers as a tax-free employee benefit. Such a policy would promote public transit, reduce traffic congestion, and reduce greenhouse gases by empowering and encouraging the business community to reduce its employees' automobile work trips. In essence, the proposal would allow employees to get transit passes and tickets with tax-free money. This saves them money and it saves employers money. It secures support from employers for the use of public transit and for the promotion of public transit use at the work site, where it is most effective.
This policy has proven very successful in the United States over the past 25 years. Federal government studies have shown that it builds transit use by approximately 25% at participating employers. The policy has been expanded eight times, and pending legislation would expand it further. This policy promoting public transport at the workplace was also recently begun in Great Britain.
In Canada, public transit accounts now for 11% of all work-related commuting trips. This leaves tremendous room for growth. It's an opportunity. After fifteen years in San Francisco, as one example, in San Francisco's largest transit system, the BART train system, over 60% of employed rush hour commuters are now getting transit benefits. This is a commonplace program in the United States. This data suggests that Canadian greenhouse gases could fall by 9 million tonnes by 2025 as a result of this policy, from 21 million fewer automobile trips. To make this understandable, this is the equivalent of planting 65 million trees.
Building transit use reduces traffic congestion, which improves business productivity. This is a business-based program. It also makes communities more liveable and improves air quality.
In sum, allowing tax-free employer-provided benefits would contribute to a more prosperous and sustainable future in Canada in the following ways: by growing the number of Canadians using public transit; by increasing transit revenues; by being a private-sector-driven solution having negligible costs in early years; and being highly visible to employees who would see their savings every time they buy their transit tickets or pass, and really every time they board the bus or train.
This would be a Canada-based environmental policy, and it would complement the 2006 budget's public transit tax credit with an employer-focused plan with proven effectiveness and proven cost-effectiveness.
Thank you very much.