Evidence of meeting #8 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was federal.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
I'll have to intervene there. I'll give you time to think about it while we go to Monsieur Coderre for his seven minutes.
Liberal
Denis Coderre Liberal Bourassa, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
So now Saskatoon is a rural municipality!
Mr. Thomas, if I understand you correctly, the feds have nothing to do with public transit services.
It should pull out.
Is that it?
Federal and Ontario Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Yes, that's it.
Liberal
Denis Coderre Liberal Bourassa, QC
Yes, you are very direct. I like how direct you are. We are not going to argue.
You are also saying that the Canadian government should not get involved in infrastructure?
Federal and Ontario Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
That depends. If it has to do with international ports, like the port of Vancouver—
Liberal
Denis Coderre Liberal Bourassa, QC
We have the bridge corporation. That handles the St. Lawrence. Does that mean that we should forget about the bridge corporation and that we should not have invested money in the Champlain Bridge?
You have worked for André Bissonnette. You know the south shore well. You know how it works. So you are saying to pull out.
You can answer in English. I'm a Liberal. You can speak in both official languages. I don't have any problem as long as you understand my question and you're providing me with an answer.
So we should pull out from La Société des ponts...?
Federal and Ontario Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
The idea of a federal government operating a bridge from one shore of Canadian soil to the other doesn't make any logical sense. That bridge connects to a city roadway network and a provincial roadway network that's 100% designed, built, and maintained by Quebec. Am I not correct?
Liberal
Denis Coderre Liberal Bourassa, QC
No, you're not correct, because the bridge is an investment not only for the local economy, but for all of eastern Canada.
You are making the Tea Party sound like herbal tea drinkers. Having been part of a government before, I know that it has to make investments. So taxes are supposed to be used for services. I agree with you on that.
In basic economics, infrastructure is what brings in investments. When there are investments, there is wealth and the wealth turns into services. But the government is not a company. It has to provide services, and not just in Montreal. There are also taxpayers in rural regions and they are entitled to those services. But if they have no transportation or infrastructure, we have a problem, Mr. Thomas.
I am a radical centrist. I try to find a balance between the two. Yesterday, Richard Martineau was on Tout le monde en parle, as you might have seen, Mr. Chair. He is not really a leftist and he said that, in order to get depth perception, you need a left eye and a right eye. I really liked that. So we need to figure out how to get some depth perception.
I agree with you on the issue of accountability. We have to find ways to be accountable so that the money is well spent. But are you telling us that we should not take care of public transit, that it is not our problem and that we should not have a national transit strategy? I don't agree with that, but I can respect your point of view.
Or are you saying that we should perhaps review how we invest our money in order to make sure that people get services? Not everyone has big houses and two vehicles. Some people don’t have that many resources, but they want to protect the environment. So they invest in public transit. What role do governments play in that?
Finally, did I hear correctly that you want to scrap the gas tax? If so, does that mean transferring taxation power to the provinces and municipalities so that they can do whatever they want with the money? Is that what you are telling us today? I am just trying to understand.
Federal and Ontario Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Yes. I mean, roads have been a provincial responsibility since Confederation. The federal government taxing fuel is something newer. For the longest time, the federal government taxed fuel and didn't contribute to roads, and that caused a lot of resentment in urban areas and in provinces. Now the federal government is taxing it and, through the FCM , is transmitting the money back.
I missed the Tea Party reference because you were switching back and forth. What was the deal with the Tea Party?
Liberal
Denis Coderre Liberal Bourassa, QC
That's my sense of humour. It was supposed to be funny. It explains the two solitudes. We sometimes have good concepts in French that cannot really be translated. It just means that, even though our opinions may be well thought out, politics, like life, is made up of nuances. We cannot just say that that's the way things are, that things are bad and that everyone is like that and that we shouldn't get involved.
Mr. Thomas, with all due respect, I commend all organizations asking that money be well spent. The government's role is also to make sure that everyone has services, wherever they are, from coast to coast to coast.
Did I say “coast” three times? Is that what I said? The other “coast” is the American border.
The Canadian government has a role to play. I come from Quebec and I want us to respect the Constitution. I understand that we might have to invest and we have to make sure that everyone can play a part. But you are telling us that there is no part to play and that, on top of that, the federal government should remove the gas tax. I feel there will be inequities among municipalities. It is not just about the municipalities. It is also a matter of citizenship. Everyone has a right to have the same quality of life and belong to the first class, whether they live in a rural or urban area.
We need to have guidelines on how to spend the money. We have to invest, since we are not going to let people starve. One way is to invest in infrastructure. The Canadian government, with the support of the official opposition, decided to invest in order to protect our economy by providing services to people, as it did a while ago.
I actually respect your point of view. I am just asking you to look at the subtleties. It is important for the government to play its part and to provide services to people.
Mr. Chair, I could talk for hours but I am going to stop here.
October 24th, 2011 / 4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
For the benefit of my colleague, there's a fourth coast: Ontario has over 1,000 kilometres of coastline on its southern boundary, so why don't we just stick with sea through to sea, which is our motto? guess?
Thank you to our witness for appearing. This will be a very different round of questioning. Admittedly, your position among the witnesses has been very unique. Everyone to this point has supported, in some measure, a national transit strategy of some nature. You're the first one who has outright rejected the concept, so I'm not sure if I can ask questions now about the contents of a potential national transit strategy.
But you do raise something that, through the course of listening to witnesses, began to gnaw away at me a little. A professor appeared here, testifying as an individual, and I posed a question to him about what the idea of a transit strategy is attempting to solve and whether or not it's trying to solve something that's actually federal in nature.
The question I raised is that we likely have a problem with the densification of municipalities as to whether they're sufficiently densified, compounded by the revenue problem for municipalities with respect to provincial downloading. The question I asked was, “Is the federal government now being asked to pick up the tab for problems that were not its own creation?”
I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Federal and Ontario Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
I think it's very clear that for every penny or nickel of excise tax on motor fuel that the Government of Canada stopped collecting, the municipalities or provinces would start collecting it, in many cases, and they would apply that money to roads and transportation. So we think the most straightforward and efficient way is for the feds to abandon this field of taxation.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Let me clarify that a little more. If one of the root problems is a lack of densification, how does a transit strategy solve the municipal problem of needing to densify more? Or, secondarily, if one of the root problems on the revenue side is that the provinces have downloaded, how does a national public transit strategy reverse provincial downloading? That's more the question I'm getting to.
Federal and Ontario Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
We don't think broad-brush federal guidelines lead to effective services. In the area of health care, we believe that the Canada Health Act has stymied innovation and has prevented provinces and local health authorities from innovating.
In the areas of densification and downloading, we believe the biggest problem with transit and transportation is that the people who build roads provide them free of charge. You see bigger houses in pastures farther out because it costs you nothing to use the road to get to your job, and we think densification would occur at a rational level if people had to pay for the roads to get there.
I can give you a quick anecdote from my part of the world. In the Fraser Valley, one of the cities went on a massive job-creation endeavour and rezoned all kinds of industrial land. It zoned for housing close to the industrial land, provided tax incentives for industry to locate in the city, and then watched its labour force migrate 30 miles down the freeway so they could have bigger houses with bigger garages. So whereas previously the plugged on-ramp was the one from the suburbs into Vancouver, now the freeway interchange between the city and the valley is plugged, and the one that was practically out at the mountains, because the freeway was free to use.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Are you suggesting that to extend public transit systems further out, we simply migrate the potential problem outward? Is that what you're saying, or is it not what you're saying? I'm trying to understand what you're saying.
