He has proven he is athletically oriented and that would be a wonderful statement of government leadership in how to move passengers in an efficient way.
Members may know if they have ever read Scientific American that of all the modes of transportation the one requiring the least amount of energy per kilometre is the bicycle; the clear winner over every other form of transportation. If we want to reduce costs and pollution we ought to be pushing bicycles.
Bill S-7 specifies we should go for alternate fuels. One of the things that disturbs me or causes me the most amount of concern is here again we have the push toward quotas and legislative requirements. I know it is good to set goals. There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with saying we ought to set a goal but the error in this bill is instead of using the legislation to set a performance goal we are using the legislation to set a method goal.
In other words, we are not saying we want to have vehicles run with better and cheaper fuel that pollute the atmosphere less. We are saying we require a certain quota of vehicles converted for alternate fuel.
I noticed in scanning the bill there is an internal contradiction. It states that by a 2001 the goal is to have 75 per cent of vehicles on alternate fuels. If 75 per cent of the vehicles are on a certain type of fuel, the other ones are the alternate because these are now in the majority. If we did that our definitions would have to be changed. That is a moot point but it is one where we need to be careful in what we say.
Most important, is it really cost effective? We know that to convert vehicles manufactured for one type of fuel is a costly activity. The return economically on that conversion is only there if the vehicle is driven a sufficient distance per year. For most of these conversion costs the fuel source is also less expensive and so there is a financial gain to be had. However, unless one drives the vehicle a sufficient distance it is not economical.
Approximately 70 per cent of vehicles owned by the federal government or its agencies are driven a distance less than the critical point at which it is economical to do the conversion. We need to go back one step and say that instead of converting existing vehicles we need to produce vehicles in the first place with the ability to handle current or alternate fuels.
Here again we have a great problem because it is impossible to predict with accuracy the future. It could well be because of certain economic or environmental disasters or things beyond our control that certain types of fuels will become unavailable in sufficient quantity. As the hon. member for Edmonton Southwest mentioned, there have been examples of vehicles designed to run on one kind of fuel suddenly being parked because no fuel is available. It is wise to have dual fuel vehicles not only for the availability of the fuel but also in the event it goes out of the range of the alternate fuel station.
There are many dual vehicles. I have been a passenger in a vehicle in which there is a switch on the dash. It drives along on propane and as soon as the propane is gone and the propane station is out of range, the driver can flip a switch and the vehicle will resume running on gasoline as it was originally intended. That is a cost item. Vehicles which run on two fuels require a greater cost in manufacturing if it is done at the manufacturing level and certainly involves a cost if done at the conversion level.
Another factor is what proportion of the cost is the actual cost of producing the fuel and what proportion is the taxation. Provinces and certainly the federal government have fuel taxes. There has been a bit of publicity given to the latest fuel tax the government had the audacity to introduce in the last budget. It was a nominal 1.5 per cent per litre. Many Canadians do not realize that figure is not accurate; it is a new tax of 1.605 cents per litre since GST is paid on the tax as well. The government is not happy unless it is taxing the taxes.
Propane, compressed natural gas and normal gasoline, as we call it, have different taxation levels. It is no secret, at least in Alberta, that one of the main reasons propane is economical is simply that the government is not taxing it. At the manufacturing or refinery level the cost of the two fuels was not that much different. The tax differentiated them.
Perhaps we should simply change the tax structure to give a slight advantage to one fuel if it can be proven advantageous to the environment. Here again I express caution because we are now intruding in the marketplace and what we ought to be doing is setting performance standards, not method standards. In other words, we do not care how the goal is achieved; rather we do care the stated environmental goal is achieved.
I can think of specific examples in which governments have tried to encourage good environmental practices. I remember the $100 tax on air conditioning. That was really a very bad tax, because there were a lot of vehicles that were much more efficient with air conditioning than without.
I would simply urge the government to think very carefully about passing bills of this nature, which are so coercive and are not clearly defined in terms of objectives to be met.