We mustn't, however, lose sight of the fact that in an aging society, we do have an increasing population without access to the private car. With the decline of the family, the extended family as a unit, many people can no longer depend on immediate relatives to provide them with transportation as they age.
One of the goals of providing at least some basic rural transit is so that people who are aging can remain living in the communities where they've spent their lives and can still have access to hospitals and shopping and so on. It's becoming increasingly difficult in many of those communities, particularly where downtown cores are being replaced by big-box stores in the suburbs--in Carleton Place, for example, near Ottawa.
So it's a complex problem. There's certainly no single solution. I think it's certainly a national problem and it's right for federal legislators to be interested in it.