Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Finance. Welcome to Montreal.
I do not feel that I have to convince you that investment in public transit is good for Canadian society. That goes without saying. Not only does it improve mobility and flow, it also reduces the need to invest in roads. It reduces traffic congestion. The Government of Quebec tells us that traffic congestion makes us lose an annual $1.5 billion in productivity in greater Montreal.
Investments in public transit provide structure. I have always said that the main argument in favour of public transit is an economic one. The environmental advantage is not to be ignored by any means, but the main argument is economic. Investments in all new public transit infrastructure projects must be increased. Greenhouse gas emissions are simultaneously reduced.
In our view, a lack of investment in public transit causes Canadian cities to lose productivity and, at the same time, adversely affects the residents' quality of life.
We are not here today to convince you that something must be done. Our role is rather to set off a debate about how things are going to be done, how much is going to be spent, when it is going to be spent and where the money will come from.
In December 2009, the City of Montreal, where I am a city councillor, adopted the Canadian Urban Transit Association's Vision 2040. We in fact demanded the same things as CUTA, such as that public transit become part of government policy, that investments be used not only to expand services, but also to encourage innovation so that the public transit system can become modern and efficient. That will help Canadian manufacturers to increase their markets overseas. We also subscribe to the view that public transit must become greener by increasing its energy efficiency so that greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.
The future of public transit is an electric one. Currently we are doing the switchover here in Montreal. We're beginning to plan for a point in 2025 that will have zero emissions, which, you can understand, in terms of infrastructure, means a major challenge.
I'd like to inform the members of the committee that the Société de transport de Montréal, in case you do not know, won the American Public Transportation Association prize as the best transit agency in North America for 2010-11. It's a huge distinction. We were the first among the over 1,500 transit agencies that are members of APTA. They gave us the prize because we were able to augment ridership and have better customer satisfaction, good customer retention, and better and more frequent services. That is largely because a consensus exists in Montreal for public transit. The city and agglomeration councils were able to increase funding to us for our operational budget from $241 million a year to $390 million. But we have now reached the limit of what municipalities can do.
Over the last five years, we've increased metro services by 27%. That includes, however, an extension of three new stations. In real terms, we have increased metro services by 17% and bus services by 16%, and we have gained and retained 8% more riders than we had before.
These are enormous figures, but we face the reality that we have current needs of $11 billion for new infrastructure. They're absolutely necessary projects; none of these are to go beyond what we currently can do. We have $4 billion for new metro cars coming up.
I'll finish rather quickly, Mr. Chair, and I'll add my other remarks in the free speech section.
We have three fundamental recommendations.
The first is the creation of a national public transit fund to provide stable, long-term capital funding.
Some people call that a national transit strategy. Others call it something else. Whatever it is,
we need it.
The Government of Canada has announced that it will make the gas tax fund permanent. We recommend that this be indexed.
Third, public transit must be made a part of the long-term public infrastructure program. That means replacing the Building Canada program with a new long-term infrastructure program.
Thank you.