Mr. Speaker, I thank the member opposite for the motion. The government should consider making employer provided transit passes a tax exempt benefit.
I must admit that when this initiative came across my desk I thought it was a provocative thought, so I enter into the debate with that kind of mindset. These are interesting initiatives from members who are trying to address real and valid issues that exist in society.
This is a bit of a peephole reaction to creating tax legislation. One is forever looking through a narrow glass and not necessarily getting the entire picture. I offer this as more of a response than a criticism. It does not address the fact that all employers do not offer transit passes. It does not do anything for those people who use transit who are not employees, people such as seniors, students and the unemployed. It does not do anything for these folks. I am not entirely convinced that we can confer a certain kind of benefit on one class of citizen without expanding the benefit to other classes of citizen, all of whom are transit riders.
I would like to see a proposal, if this was the kind of direction in which the government wished to go, where the benefits of using transit were readily apparent and were of some use to all classes of citizens.
The second consideration that bothers me is the peephole approach to public policy. Municipal, federal and provincial governments already give substantial subsidies to transit.
It is my understanding that at this point in time approximately 48% of transit costs are subsidized costs. Ridership or public riding contributes only 52%. This brings me to one of the more critical components of the argument of my friend opposite, that there is an implicit assumption that with this exemption ridership will increase.
It was not clear to me in debate or in reading his support materials that ridership would increase. Again I react anecdotally here. I would have thought that employees who are using transit already will not necessarily increase the ridership. They will continue to use the transit regardless of whether or not they get a tax exempt benefit. I am not at all persuaded that ridership will be increased. If ridership is not increased, we do not achieve what we want to achieve in terms of harm reduction to the environment or trying to meet Kyoto targets.
I would ask the hon. member to think, if this debate goes forward, about the issue of how he can give assurances that ridership will increase. The only clear evidence at this point is that tax revenues will be reduced. I do not find this argument to be a persuasive one.
We all wish to reduce greenhouse gases and to meet our Kyoto requirements. The linkage is not necessarily demonstrable. The assumption is that cars will be taken off the road—and I hope that is true—by giving this exemption. If cars are taken off the road our greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced and we will be able to meet our Kyoto requirements.
The linkage again is not clear in my mind. This is in some respects an article of faith rather than a clear evidential linkage. Those are the criticisms I have of the motion. As can be seen in the phrasing of my criticisms, I am not at all opposed to the thought or to the general direction. I would like to suggest that possibly the exemption may be only one way of achieving the benefit the hon. member wishes to obtain. There may well be better ways to achieve these laudable goals by not taking a kind of peephole approach to little pieces and sections of the Income Tax Act which in and of themselves may create inconsistencies that are not necessarily anticipated.
Again I laud the hon. member for his initiative. As I said, when this initiative came across my desk I thought it was a good idea. It was not one that readily yielded criticism. I offer my observations to him in the form of encouragement to a fellow parliamentarian.