Thank you very much. That's an excellent question, because there's a lot of confusion about this issue.
What we're proposing is a tax exemption for employer-provided transit benefits, which is very different from the tax credit that's currently in place. Let me explain.
Right now, most people in Canada get a free parking spot at their place of work. Most Canadians who get that free parking spot aren't paying tax on it as a taxable employer benefit, because there aren't enough parking spots for everybody. In other words, if there are 100 people working at a place with only 80 parking spots, it's considered scramble parking, because it's not reserved and hence it's not taxable. Yet, if an employer wants to provide a transit pass or a transit benefit towards your trip to work on transit, it's fully taxable at the marginal rate. That's the “unlevel playing field”, if you will.
The U.S. has this kind of measure. In the U.S., an individual can claim—and the employer can claim—up to I think $120 a month right now for non-taxable transit benefits at the place of work. If you look at the places where this has been taken up in a big way—San Francisco, Chicago, the New York area—there have been massive increases in ridership. I'd be happy to share the details of that with you.