Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to follow the member for Winnipeg--Transcona. He does have a tendency to build enthusiasm into a debate. I appreciate a number of his comments as well as the comments of other members of the House during the debate.
I appreciate him chastising the government member for Northumberland who spoke in opposition to the legislation. I am afraid I will to have to continue on with that tact.
The member for Northumberland did not put a very convincing debate forward as to why he and the government should not support the legislation which is a small start and a small piece of a very large problem. The legislation put forward today would be one way to start the process and ultimately reduce emissions in the atmosphere.
I continually see the Liberal government spending an inordinate amount of energy coming up with reasons not to do something positive as opposed to coming up with reasons things should happen in a positive fashion. I will give some examples.
The first reason the government came up with is that this cannot happen because it is a tax rebate of sorts. It would be a tax write-off against the cost of public transportation. The member for Northumberland says that not all people who take public transit actually have taxable income and therefore it would not be an advantage for them.
Is that not wonderful? If that is the case, perhaps there should not be any taxable write-offs at all. I am sure some people would be affected where they do not have taxable income and therefore it would not be an advantage for them. However it would be quite an advantage to a number of other people who do have taxable incomes. We should look at the positive side of this as opposed to the negative.
I could not believe it when I heard the member suggest that because we now accountability a person has to collect receipts in order to get a taxable benefit write-off. He said that the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, heaven forbid, would be flooded with the receipts that people would collect and be able to use as a tax write-off.
Why have any taxable write-offs if CCRA cannot put together a simple system to account for the tax deductibility of a bus ticket. Is that not wonderful? We have a tax collection system that cannot possibly handle this flood of receipts that would be put forward for a tax write-off.
If that is the reason the government does not want to accept the legislation, it should come back to the House with some better alternatives. It is so easy to say no. It is always easy to throw water on something that is very positive but it is not so easy to come forward with some positive suggestions.
Let us look at another one. In another life I actually had a lot of experience with respect to public transit. I sat on the board of directors of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. I also sat on the transportation committee of the FCM. Every year we put forward to the federal government a suggestion that there should be a tax advantage if in fact people take public transit.
We have a chicken and an egg scenario here. Public transit is funded by the municipalities and the provinces. Since the federal government has no responsibility for public transit, why should it take any risk and lose income?
The municipalities for the most part fund public transportation. They put a lot of funding into it so they can take people off their infrastructure, get them out of their cars and into buses, LRTs and GO trains. The municipalities and the provinces fix the roads, not the federal government, which has abdicated its responsibility for that.
It is to the advantage of the municipalities to put money into public transit and get people out of their cars. All we are suggesting is that the federal government take the small risk of getting people out of their cars and into public transit.
By the way, when we take people out of their cars and put them on public transit we also serve a useful purpose, which is to protect the environment, a responsibility the federal government has once again abdicated to other levels of government.
I had the opportunity to live in the wonderful city of Toronto for a number of years. When I drove from my house to downtown Toronto where I worked, I could see in the skyline a terrible yellow haze. The haze came from pollution. We know now that in our major urban centres we have a serious problem with pollution. We know that on an annual basis Toronto has more and more days where there are smog alerts.
As the member for Winnipeg--Transcona has indicated, if members have not got the message already, support the legislation on behalf of the coalition. I would really like to see the government rethink its position because it is a good first small step. It should do something positive for once.