moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, a minimum of 20 per cent of federal excise tax revenues on gasoline should be directed to joint federal and provincial programs to upgrade or renew many sub-standard sections of the national highway system.
Mr. Speaker, my motion proposes that two cents from the ten cents per litre federal excise tax on gasoline be directed to joint federal and provincial programs to upgrade and renew our crumbling national highway system.
I have addressed this issue many times both in and out of the House. I was eagerly anticipating presentation of this motion and I very deeply regret that today we will be going through this silly charade of a debate with no opportunity for a vote on a matter of great public interest.
Canada is the only developed country with no national highway program or even a coherent national highways policy.
In 1992, a federal-provincial study identified 25,400 kilometres, including the Trans-Canada Highway and a few major cross-border arteries, as the national highway system. However, having been identified, the system has been almost totally forgotten. There is no administrative framework and no federal funding for maintaining or upgrading it.
Every year the federal government collects about $5 billion in fuel excise taxes, including $4.3 billion specifically from highway fuels. A miserable 4% of that lovely pot of money is going to be reinvested in highways this year.
On November 4, 1998, in the Standing Committee on Transport, the Minister of Transport readily admitted that there is a lack of balance between federal fuel tax collected and federal expenditures on roads. He said that the government needed the money for other purposes. He stated, “I accept the general thrust of your argument and it is something we have to work toward as we progressively get the books in order”. The government has been crowing about its huge projected revenue surpluses, surpluses from usurious taxation, so the time has come to invest in something of permanent national benefit. Show us the money, Mr. Minister.
On February 7, 1997, in a transport committee report called, A National Highway Renewal Strategy, it is mentioned that the Minister of Finance had conceded that the dedicated tax concept might be examined at such time as the government is generating substantial surpluses. Show us the money, Mr. Minister.
That same finance minister has from time to time expressed his distaste for the dedication of tax revenues and has indicated that dedicated taxes are not the Canadian way. Apparently only excessive taxes can be classified as truly Canadian. Actually there are precedents for dedicated federal taxes. For example, old age security and the air navigation system were both in the past funded by dedicated taxes. Now, in spite of usurious federal fuel taxes, there is no dedicated federal road improvement fund in place.
Contrast this with the United States where federal fuel taxes go into a highway trust fund, where the money is protected by a budgetary firewall mandating that transportation infrastructure spending cannot be reduced in order to finance other programs. The U.S. transportation equity act provides each state with a minimum guaranteed level of federal highway funding proportional to each state's highway mileage.
The budget for six years is $217 billion U.S. An equivalent expenditure proportional to Canada's population would be $5.3 billion Canadian annually, not much more than we have been paying every year into the fuel tax fund, or as fuel taxes with nothing substantive to show for it.
Our neighbours have not only identified a national highway system, they fund it, as part of the program that I have just described, to the tune of $29,000 per mile per year.
If we financed our much smaller so-called national highway system at that rate, the annual cost in Canadian dollars would be less than $700 million. With the $800 million that my motion would yield, we could actually play catch-up on the worst parts of the system before it deteriorates beyond the point of no return. If we do nothing and total replacement becomes necessary, tens of billions of dollars will have to be found somewhere or we will have to revert to red river carts.
It is a national disgrace that the Trans-Canada Highway traffic is routinely diverted south of the border to where the highways are. Tens of millions of dollars in fuel taxes that could be used to upgrade our system stay in the United States, together with the costs of lodging, meals, repairs and incidentals.
Traffic does not just move south for comfort, convenience and speed, but also for safety. Hundreds of people die every year in Canada because of substandard highways. Almost every province has at least one stretch of two-lane Trans-Canada Highway referred to locally as the “death strip” or “death alley”. In Saskatchewan, the death strip happens to be in my riding where a 113 kilometre segment has claimed 40 lives in the last 20 years. The provincial government has just completed twinning a 27 kilometre piece of it, with no federal assistance, and plans to complete this project in small segments over a period of several years. To do that, it will have to take funds away from secondary roads now being destroyed, thanks to federally-blessed railway abandonments.
Ninety-five per cent of Canadian passenger miles and 24% per cent of freight tonne miles move on the public road system which is rapidly disintegrating under that heavy burden. Transferring a mere two cents per litre from the ten cent federal excise tax for the national highway system would not only solve some of our arterial highway problems, but it would free up provincial funds for other roads.
Yesterday I received an unsolicited and kind letter of support from Mr. Brian Hunt, the president of the 3.2 million member Canadian Automobile Association. I would like to quote a few segments of his letter. He said:
—structurally sound highways improve safety, productivity and trade. The National Highway System must be upgraded to ensure continued economic growth and productivity across the country. It's time the federal government paid serious attention to our nation's transportation infrastructure...and commit to multi-year funding for Canada's national transportation infrastructure.
That is from a member of the public who represents a very large number of Canadians.
The government has always had a bottomless purse to pursue pork barrel projects in the Prime Minister's riding, development aid to despotic countries like China and useless initiatives such as universal firearms registration. But, it has nothing for vital communication links of any kind, much less highways.
One cannot see the condition of a highway from a Challenger jet at 30,000 feet. I would recommend that a few cabinet ministers jump into their limousines and try driving from here to Vancouver. Perhaps then they would gain a little understanding of the situation.