Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Wetaskiwin for sharing his time with me. I compliment my colleague the member for South Surrey—White Rock—Langley for bringing this issue forward today as a supply motion from the official opposition.
When talking about transportation, we can talk about a lot of things that affect just about everyone with whom we come into contact on a daily basis. We can talk about rail line abandonment. That is quite an issue in a lot of parts of the country. I am sure my colleague from Cypress—Grasslands will talk about that later. In my neck of the woods the rail line was abandoned and now it is used for storage. It has caused quite a lot of grief.
Railway efficiency is another issue that needs to be looked at. It is a huge concern in Canada. We are still going through the huge restructuring of the air industry. We have some pains there that need to be looked at. There is an airport in my riding which the municipality took over and now the government is going to change the rules and there is fear of what that could do.
We need a continental road system as the member for Wetaskiwin mentioned. We need to be able to trade east and west and north and south in North America to get our products to market. We need new and more efficient border points which are part of the whole scheme of this continental system.
On the infrastructure program that has been talked about, the last time that infrastructure program was implemented I was involved in municipal politics. At that time there was a struggle for municipalities to come up with the 30 cent dollars that were worked out with the province and the federal government in splitting it three ways. Now it is going to be even tougher because some of the downloading that has happened in this country has ended up at the municipal level. The municipalities are not as well equipped to be involved on these programs as they were last time.
I am sure environmental issues will be addressed when it comes to transportation. Public transportation and urban rail transportation are part of the environmental solution. New technologies that are developing are part of the system that needs to be looked at.
I would like to reserve my comments to an issue that has been on the minds of Canadians this winter. It is the high price of fuel.
For the last several months prices have soared by up to 25% per litre in some regions. Consumers are concerned about how these prices will increase their cost of living. Trucking associations are concerned about how this will affect their ability to remain in business. Economists are concerned about the consequences of rising input costs on the entire Canadian economy.
In my own riding of Lethbridge prices have gone up anywhere from 20% to 25%. This has prompted a lot of letters, a lot of angry phone calls and a lot of action on behalf of citizens demanding some action and answers from the government. The spike in fuel prices has hit truckers especially hard. In some areas of the country the price of diesel fuel has surpassed the price of regular gasoline. That is an extremely rare occurrence.
Fuel represents about one-third of a trucking company's costs and is second only to labour. While some truckers are fortunate enough to have fuel cost adjustment clauses in their contracts, many truckers are forced to swallow that cost.
Several weeks ago Canadians woke up to the news that angry truckers had blockaded highways and border crossings in an effort to draw national attention to their plight. Truckers across the continent vented their frustration by slowing down traffic in major cities and organized protest rallies on Parliament Hill and on Capitol Hill. In Ottawa a fleet of 200 trucks shut down Wellington Street for hours demanding relief from the government.
The official opposition supports the trucking association in its call for tax relief. It recognizes the importance of this $30 billion industry in Canada. Trucks move 70% of manufactured goods in Canada and almost all of the food.
As one trucker quite accurately said, the key chain controls the food chain. Every single item on the grocery store shelf that is shipped by truck could increase in price if relief is not found soon.
Through its four cent per litre excise tax on road diesel and the GST, the federal government sucked close to half a billion dollars in fuel tax revenues directly out of the pockets of truck drivers in 1998-99. Indirectly the government siphons out billions more through income taxes and user fees. The provincial governments also take their share of money out of truckers' pockets by levying an additional per litre tax of at least nine cents in addition to user fees. More regulation is not the answer.
Lately the member for Ottawa Centre has fancied himself as somewhat of an activist on gas prices and has proposed a return to what could be easily called the national energy program, words that send fear through western Canada. In the Ottawa Sun a few weeks ago he proposed that all the greedy world oil producers be completely shut out of Canadian markets to give consumers relief from fluctuating gas prices. He said that since Canada produces enough oil to be self-sustaining, the government should turn on the switch and keep the oil in Canada. This is a kind of made in Canada solution I suppose.
What the member has no doubt forgotten is that the national energy program which was aimed at promoting energy self-sufficiency increased Canadian control of the oil industry and generated more federal revenues in the energy sector. This ripped $60 billion out of the Alberta economy alone. That economic program devastated Alberta more than any other catastrophe could. Overnight the province shut down and it was just like a steel wall was put up and the province was paralyzed.
Despite the tremendous gains that we have made in Alberta by diversifying since those dark days of Pierre Trudeau, any attempt to regulate will hit the resource sector hard. The government would do well to remember this as it contemplates meeting its Kyoto commitments.
While truckers have borne the brunt of this problem, no one has escaped the sting of high gas prices. High diesel prices are a concern for farmers who will be spending hundreds of dollars in extra fuel costs to plant their crops this spring. Each year farmers use millions of gallons of fuel to run their farm equipment, work the soil, seed, raise the crops and then harvest them, not to mention the spin-off onto the cost of fertilizer and chemicals.
A report from Statistics Canada shows Canadian farmers in 1998 had net fuel expenses of $325,800,000, almost 6% of their total operating expenses. With fuel costs up 33% since January in Ontario, farmers are looking at a 10% reduction in net cash income unless the government is willing to reduce its level of taxation on fuels. Many farmers are afraid that the increase in fuel costs will completely wipe out any assistance they may receive from other areas.
High fuel prices have hit every sector of the economy. The leap in fuel prices is the largest monthly jump since Statistics Canada started collecting that information 50 years ago. It also led to a spike in inflation which bumped the inflation rate up by 2.7%. That jump was the largest month to month increase in five years. When that happens, as we know, it hurts everybody, especially people who are on fixed incomes, single parents, people who are earning minimum wage. Those are the people who are hurt the hardest. They cannot afford this. Clearly the government must do something to alleviate the pressure of high fuel prices on the economy.
The official opposition believes that the government must immediately reduce fuel taxes. Fuel taxes have increased by 600% since 1985, jumping from 1.5 cents to 10 cents per litre.
The latest increase came in 1995 when the Liberal government was still battling the Tory legacy of billion dollar deficits and the current Minister of Finance introduced a 1.5 cent per litre excise tax to reduce the federal deficit. According to the Canadian Automobile Association, this tax has pumped over $500 million annually into the government's consolidated revenue fund. There is no reason for this tax to still be in place. The government is facing multibillion dollar surpluses which leave ample room for tax relief.
Furthermore the government has collected even more tax revenue as the price of gasoline increases. The GST, another deficit fighting measure still in place, is applied to the total pump price after provincial and federal taxes are included. This compounds the problem. This is a tax on a tax and it is unfair to consumers.
The official opposition has proposed a tax solution that would further lighten the load of the taxpaying public. The 17% solution would provide substantial immediate and direct relief to overtaxed Canadians and would create greater wealth in our economy.
Reductions in corporate and small business taxes would go even further to lighten the tax load for Canadian truckers and farmers, but the government has chosen to ignore this option preferring instead to study the matter a while longer. The government has commissioned the Conference Board of Canada to study gas prices. Why? How many more reports do we need? We have had dozens of investigations into the gasoline retail industry by the Competition Bureau and still we go on.
The government wants to do a study. We know the answer. Fuel prices in the country are too high.