Madam Speaker, first, I would like to congratulate you on your appointment to a position of responsibility. I am sure you will fill it with honour and a great sense of responsibility and wisdom.
I will say a few words on sustainable transport. The bill, which is former Bill C-101, lends itself very much to some considerations that ought to be related to the overall context of sustainable transport. In the 1993 red book as a party platform we devoted an entire chapter to sustainable development. Therefore, it is appropriate that we endeavour to launch new policies, including transportation policies within that overall concept.
This is not a new thought. It was adopted in Bill C-46 when the new Department of Industry was launched a couple of years ago. The same happened by incorporating a reference to sustainable development in Bill C-48 which bill created the new Department of Natural Resources. More recently the House debated and approved the creation of the position of the Commissioner for Sustainable Development which I believe was followed by a proclamation in December.
Therefore, it would make political logic to also insert the concept in the National Transportation Act and consolidation of the Railway Act and to put forward some thoughts on sustainable development. I will do that very briefly.
I congratulate the former minister who produced the bill, a massive effort no doubt, and for having decided that this aspect of our economy needs rationalization. We fully agree with him.
There is something which would have carried the matter a step further and would have been desirable. In section 5 of the act under the declaration section a reference is missing, one that would refer to the need for our national transportation system to be operated and developed in keeping with the principles of sustainable development. It is unfortunate it has not taken place yet. Those principles can be found in the legislation I referred to a moment ago which will be guiding the activities of the Commissioner for Sustainable Development in the auditor general's office. It is a set of principles which would be extremely useful within the context of national transportation.
Let me explain what sustainable transportation really means. It means a number of things. It means finding ways of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, keeping in mind the commitment we made internationally of stabilizing our carbon dioxide emissions and reducing them after the year 2000. It means keeping in mind that damage to the atmosphere is caused by air traffic in particular, which is an issue that needs to be addressed and is a matter of increasing urgency. It means that within the context of ground transportation we want to encourage movement of people with the
least consumption of energy, with the least production of pollution, with the least congestion of traffic. We want to find ways of transportation that move people with the lowest energy consumption per unit.
Finally I might add the necessity of conducting research for alternative fuels for the ones we are presently using. Research badly needs a shift in emphasis from the one we have so far applied when it comes to the energy sector.
The Ontario Round Table on Environment and the Economy has produced a number of interesting sectoral task force reports. Carbon dioxide emissions related to transportation account for 31 per cent of all emissions. Of this 31 per cent, the largest component, to the extent of 81 per cent is attributed to road transportation.
Imagine the importance of short, medium or long distance railway transportation in relation to the impact it could have in reducing the dependence on road transportation. This debate is not new on this continent but it has to be raised at every opportunity which is what I am doing today.
Rail transport produces significantly lower emissions per tonne of freight carried than does road transport. Tables and studies have been produced to this effect. For every tonne of freight switched from road to rail, energy used is reduced by some 86 per cent which is a considerable amount.
The "Green Paper on the Impact of Transport on the Environment: A Community Strategy for Sustainable Mobility" was produced by the Commission of European Communities. It confirms the results of the Ontario round table to which I referred earlier.
In December 1995 the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development produced a report entitled "Keeping a Promise Towards a Sustainable Budget" and dealt with the question of transportation and sustainable development albeit perhaps in a superficial manner. We came to the conclusion that the transportation system in Canada is currently not sustainable and requires significant changes. I refer particularly to pages 23 to 27 of that report.
We were quite struck by the submission by a witness on behalf of the Transportation Association of Canada who stated that the playing field in transportation is anything but level. I quote: "It is tilted in favour of the automobile and there are many reasons for this. Our cities have been designed for cars. Cars would never have gained the popularity they have today if it had not been for roadway infrastructure provided for by the public purse. We need to tilt the playing field away from the single occupant auto and more in the direction of other means of transportation including of course railway". This is what the Transportation Association of Canada is advocating.
Two of the witnesses before our committee said that the laws should be changed and a tax exemption made for employer provided transit passes. Around Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver there are a number of short railway systems which move commuters in rush hour and therefore the question of transit passes is relevant. Such a move, namely the employer provided transit pass, would encourage employees to use public transit rather than single occupancy automobiles. This would reduce energy consumption, decrease atmospheric pollution, reduce traffic congestion and the like. An initiative of this kind would send a strong signal to employers and to society in general about the need to change attitudes toward urban transportation.
The recommendation which emerged as a result of the consultation was that the Income Tax Act be amended to provide a tax exemption for employer provided transit passes to encourage people to use public transit rather than private automobiles. The change would apply to any future taxation year. The applicability of this would not be for rural Canada but for urban Canada and the transit railway systems that surround and feed into our major metropolises.
It would also be interesting to put on the record another recommendation to the effect that the federal government put in place a surcharge on the purchase of new fuel inefficient vehicles and redirect the revenue to a fund dedicated to improving the sustainability of Canadian transportation. This may sound a bit like pie in the sky but nevertheless it is a germ of an idea whose time will come and which could be implemented with perhaps some modification.
Another recommendation on the subject of sustainable transport is directed to the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Transport. They are being asked to re-evaluate the subsidies that are being directed to the railways and to road construction and maintenance in the context of sustainable transportation. They are being asked to determine whether a new allocation of resources between rail and road funding is needed and desirable at this time.
No doubt it is good that we have a bill to streamline rail regulations and promote the formation of short line railways. The question, however, which arises in this debate is whether we have the environmental and economic impacts available of the proposed short lines and have these impacts been studied.
These are factors of some importance because of the carbon dioxide emission issue, per tonne of freight in this case, and because of the fact that the emissions by the railway system are much smaller per unit transported than the emissions by road.
Taking this fact into consideration, environmental and economic impact studies are needed to ensure that the lines proposed by this bill will not result in greater road transport and hence greater carbon dioxide emissions because this would be contrary to everything we are trying to do under sustainable development.
I appreciate the fact that this debate on road transport versus rail transport is one which has bedevilled the imagination and skills of many governments and politicians before. It is not the first time it has been raised. However, it is becoming more and more relevant because of the urbanization of Canada and the increase in concentration of people in our urban centres, therefore, the transport requirement by rail and ground that follow this type of human settlement which is converging into our urban centres.
This kind of debate would have been much less significant 100 or even 50 years ago but it will be extremely relevant in the decades ahead.
I congratulate the government on this initiative. However, I would urge it to develop a sustainable transportation policy which would take into account the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on climate change. We must come to grips with those modes of transportation which are more energy efficient than the ones we presently have.
I would also urge the government to identify subsidies which are not desirable in the achievement of sustainable environmental goals and to identify modes of transportation which are less consuming and less polluting than the ones on which we rely today.