Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House of Commons this morning to support Motion No. 360 which calls for employer provided transit passes to be an income tax exempt benefit.
I would like to congratulate my colleague, the member of parliament for Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys, who has moved this motion and who has done an enormous amount of work, not only with members of parliament from other parties, but also with a number of municipalities, trade unions, environmentalists and businesses across this country to make sure that we have in the Income Tax Act a fair opportunity for working people to provide and receive an income tax benefit for using mass transit.
Before getting into who supports this idea and some of the real and significant benefits, I want to go over the reasons for which I support Motion No. 360.
First, it affects pollution in this country. It affects the health of Canadians. It deals with the congestion problem in the cities of Canada. It is a social equity issue, an environmental issue and an economic issue. I want to say a few words about each of those headings if I might.
We all pay tax on our income. Some of the benefits we receive from our employer must also be declared as income and are therefore taxable. Employer provided parking and employer provided transit passes are both considered taxable under the current federal Income Tax Act.
However, Revenue Canada's interpretation of this act provides tax preferences allowing most employees to receive their free parking income tax free. This is an incentive for commuters to drive and represents a significant loss of income tax revenue, but this is a bias in my view for those who drive automobiles and against those who use mass transit.
One way to address this unfair bias is to provide a tax exemption to public transit users. This provides equity for non-drivers as well as motivation for drivers to switch to a mode of transportation with lower environmental costs and lower costs to the taxpayer in terms of the maintaining of roads, health care and so on. I believe it is a rare opportunity for the federal government to effect public policy at the local level.
In the United States, the opportunity for employers to provide their employees with an income tax free transit subsidy became available under the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984 and the Tax Reform Act of 1986.
On average, transit expenditures among recipients increased by 23%. With a 31% increase in transit use by participating San Francisco employees, an estimated 17 million vehicle miles were removed from their roads, 61 million tons of pollutants were avoided and $1.6 million of new transit revenue was generated. This is an example of the benefit of providing transit passes to employees as an income tax exempt benefit.
With respect to Canada's commitment to greenhouse gas reductions under the Kyoto protocol, Canada has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012. Transportation is the largest single sector source of Canada's carbon emissions, at 32%, accounting for 30% of energy used and 65% of petroleum consumed. Half of these emissions are produced by cars and light trucks in cities where public transit is available. Transportation emissions are expected to rise 52%, if this major issue is not addressed, between 1991 and the year 2020.
We also have an interesting issue with respect to transportation and greenhouse gases. One of the greatest economic and environmental challenges facing the world is the control of CO2 and other greenhouse gases because they threaten to destabilize the climate and they lead to global warming. We are seeing many examples of that around the world.
In Canada we have seen the rising sea level. We have seen temperature change in certain regions of our country. We have seen unprecedented drought cycles and extreme weather events, such as floods, fires, ice storms and so on which, cause human displacement. They cause food shortages and losses exceeding the financial capabilities of the insurance industry.
This information was provided by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy in its strategy for sustainable transportation in Ontario, which it prepared in 1995.
With respect to health, whenever we travel to cities like Vancouver, Toronto, Victoria, Halifax and Winnipeg we see more and more smog, which is ground level ozone. It has increased by about 20% over the last decade. Medical research shows that smog is contributing to increased incidents of respiratory illness, higher physician emergency room visits and increased mortality.
This is a very significant development in light of the fact that our health care has been cut back by the Liberal government by $6 billion a year. When people are being subjected to broader ill environments and broader risks to their health, they will be ill in greater numbers, requiring health care, and our health care has been taken away by the federal government to the tune of $6 billion a year.
Support for this motion might encourage the Liberal government to provide some consideration which would be helpful to working people.
We can talk about traffic congestion and how it increases travel time, parking demand, vehicle costs and wear and tear on the roads. Two forty-foot buses carrying 130 people occupy about 80 feet of a single lane, but to carry the same number of people by car requires an extra 1,500 feet of lane.
If we have 130 people in cars, versus 130 people in two buses, we will see the wear and tear on our roads, an increase in smog and pollution and we will see all sorts of negative impacts upon Canadians in this country. We believe this is another reason to support the motion.
We can talk about social inequity. Generational poverty increases when people have limited access to education and work due to mobility barriers. Adequate mobility is essential for people to participate in society as community members, producers and consumers. Public transit provides safe, affordable, basic mobility for those persons without an alternative, including transit-dependent students, lower income workers, seniors and other persons who either cannot afford or choose not to own an automobile.
Converting to public transit reduces the costs associated with the impacts of pollution, traffic congestion and the other things I have mentioned. Public transit also provides substantial regional economic development benefits by channelling transportation dollars back into the community.
We see many reasons to support such a motion. There are also many individuals and organizations supporting this particular motion. The Federation of Urban Municipalities, which is our national organization representing municipal organizations across this country, supports the motion. In my province of Saskatchewan, the city of Saskatoon, the town of Langdon, the town of Martensville and the city of Regina support this particular motion for all of the reasons I mentioned.
We also have quite a lengthy list of organizations from across the country which support such an initiative. They include: The Canadian Lung Association, the Climate Change Task Force group of the National Air Issues Co-ordination Committee, the David Suzuki Foundation, the Ontario Lung Association, Physicians for Global Survival, Pollution Probe, the Saskatchewan Lung Association, the Saskatoon Environmental Society, the Sierra Club of Canada and various trade unions and other governments.
I would like to ask members to consider supporting this motion. It is votable. It will mean better access to transit by working people. Working people, as members know, who make $40,000 a year or less do not have a lot of options for tax deductions. We do not have a lot of support in our tax system to help them get to their places of work. I think in a country like Canada, which has such an expansive geography, mass transit is the only way to go.
The last example I give before I conclude my remarks is the example of grain movement in western Canada. We have seen passenger trains being pulled off the rails. Now they are thinking of closing a lot of the rail lines in western Canada that move grain. They are using trucks instead of boxcars. That is having an additional effect on our environment because more trucks on the road affect not just the environment but our roads.
I ask all members to support this motion which my colleague in the NDP has so thoroughly researched and presented to the House of Commons.