Thank you very much, madam.
My first recommendation is one that Mr. Daniel Côté, president of the Union des municipalités du Québec, made. As he mentioned, the federal government's Rural Transit Solutions Fund does not take into account operating expenses. These expenses would have to be eligible. Furthermore, this fund does not include inter-regional transportation, but only local transportation. There is therefore a contradiction between the federal government's desire, if it is indeed its desire, to support communities and keep them connected and the real usefulness of this fund. To be funded, projects must cover a village or town of 20,000 or 25,000 people. This does not work. The fund needs to be changed to fund interregional transport. People need to be able to access the nearest community that offers the services they are entitled to. So I certainly support that proposal.
With regard to the UMQ's second proposal, which is to improve the Zero Emission Transit Fund, I fully agree. I'll just digress for a moment regarding technology. Today, in intercity transport, the technology does not yet allow electric buses to travel long enough. They can travel 80 kilometres and come back, but that is not what we call intercity transport in the major regions of Canada. You have to be able to go 500 kilometres, and there's no technology to do that right now, even if we wanted to.
We have a lot of electric vehicles at home, especially in school transportation. At our congress, we were just trying out a new fully electric coach from MCI, and it had a range of 200 or 300 kilometres, round trip. It's not enough yet, but we'll get there one day, for sure.
The other proposal is the one I mentioned earlier. The federal government, while investing billions of dollars in infrastructure, has abolished the transit tax credit that was available to transit pass holders making intercity trips. It should be reinstated because it is important for riders in small communities. For example, to get here to Ottawa, our riders can use our Grand-Remous-Maniwaki-Gatineau-Ottawa route, which we have been operating for years with the help of the Gatineau Valley Regional County Municipality. We had users who paid a monthly transit fare, and when this tax credit was withdrawn, it had a significant impact on the use of this line. So that measure should be reintroduced.
I talked about bus companies that have a contract with public transit companies, which is very common in Quebec. I gave the example of a customer who gets on a bus in Joliette and pays five or seven dollars to go to Montreal. This customer does not pay any tax on his or her ticket. Why should people have to pay a tax on intercity transportation services? If you want people to use it and you want it to be fair, a tax exemption would be in order.
Here is another proposal. In Quebec, there is a gas tax rebate. This rebate does not exist at the federal level. The federal government could contribute by refunding a portion of the excise tax to carriers. That would certainly help...