Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to enter the debate on Bill C-209. I congratulate the member for Jonquière for bringing this very important issue to the floor of the House of Commons.
I live not too far from Toronto and have occasion to go there from time to time. One thing we have in that area, which I am sure Montreal and other urban centres in Canada have, is traffic gridlock. There is an inability to travel down the roads in any kind of meaningful timeframe. More important, as other members have mentioned, is the impact on greenhouse gases and the fact that the family automobile is contributing to our environmental problems.
I am told that the average automobile will inject the amount of C02 emissions into the atmosphere equal to four times the weight of the vehicle every year. We can see that this is a detriment to our health and also to our road safety.
There are many different ways to deal with the whole issue of greenhouse gases. An area I am involved in is what we call ecological tax reform. That is the ability to shift taxes toward polluters and away from people who are undertaking environmentally friendly practices. It is in that vein that I look at this legislation and enjoy the ability to engage in the debate.
I have had the advantage of being on public transit systems all over the world. When I was in Moscow I was amazed that its subway moved about a million people a day. This is really a tremendous feat. It shows what could be accomplished if we could get more people onto the public transit system. It is a very useful piece of legislation.
The problem we have when we deal with these kinds of issues is the question of the choice. In this case it is the choice of different types of policies to achieve the objective of lowering greenhouse gases.
I started to study this legislation and some of the other studies which have been around. For instance, recent studies showed that on average a tax subsidy of this nature would only increase ridership by 15%. This was in view of the fact that ridership was at a very low level in the first place, with only 19% of available people using public transit. People who have studied this issue have said that this kind of incentive would have a very low effect on increasing ridership.
We have to look at it in that vein, because if it only increases ridership by 15%, it means that the other people who are already taking public transit are the ones who will get the lion's share of the benefit. We really have not influenced public policy or the culture of people to be more sensitive to the environment and use public transit as opposed to vehicles. It is that issue which is essential to the whole issue of greenhouse gases. We need to change our culture toward how we handle ourselves in the environment and how we use our automobiles and so forth.
When I look at the legislation, it is unclear to me whether it will have that impact on changing people's choices about how they carry on in the environment.
I will take it one step further. This is an overview of the environmental concerns. When I started to read the legislation I got a little confused because it talked about providing receipts for transportation costs. For instance, from time to time I take OC Transpo. I buy some tickets at the store. I give the bus driver the tickets when I get on the bus but I do not get a receipt. That is the normal course of business on most public transit systems. The reality is, in a majority of cases people do not have receipts. However the legislation requires people to provide receipts for this tax deduction.
It talks about reasonable amounts paid by the individual in the year for the use of public transit. I do not know what reasonable means. However it is clear to me that the income tax system is designed to find people's taxable income, and taxable income is usually considered to be earnings from employment. We do give some a blanket deduction for employment expenses. The bottom line is that we pay tax on the balance.
The legislation would change that to some significant degree in the sense that it would allow people to claim expenses which would be personal in nature. For instance, if somebody went to a hockey game in Montreal, presumably they would use the public transit and this would be allowed as a tax deduction. This seems a very strange way to reward people. I presume we are saying that if somebody else walked or whatever they would not receive a benefit from this. For that reason, these kinds of changes to the Income Tax Act would help one group of people and would be a detriment to another group.
Another issue we are talking about is that of people who live in urban areas where there is public transit available. My riding is fairly large and has about 125,000 people. However we have very little public transit. The only public transit we really have is when Toronto's GO system sends a bus to our area from time to time. In other words, it is basically a rural or semi-rural area. These people have no choice but to use their cars to go to work.
What the legislation says is that people who live and work in urban centres will be given a benefit and those who live or work in rural areas will not. For that reason it is a terribly unfair piece of legislation.
There is no question that we need more people using rapid transit. The question is, how do we do it? It may be effective for rapid transit systems to use more alternative fuels like ethanol as opposed to gasoline driven engines. This might have a more positive effect.
There is a whole gamut of different policy tools that governments could look at in the fuel cell technology. The government has been very supportive of Ballard Power and developing that kind of technology. There are all kinds of other different technologies out there that desperately want our support.
Government to me has always been about choices. We obviously cannot accomplish all the wonderful things we would like to do to reduce greenhouse gases. It is clear that we must start doing more than we are today.
The member has not mentioned it, but I suspect we are talking about millions of tax dollars going into a project of transit passes, only to attain an increased ridership of no more than 15%. We may well ask if we could take the same money and use it more effectively in new types of technology to reduce greenhouse gases.
Vancouver is debating municipal legislation that would require a special driver's licence to drive in the city. That would represent a quota system in which only so many licences would be issued and a person could not drive in downtown Vancouver without one. It is a way of pushing traffic out of the downtown core.
We need to put more emphasis on public transit. One of the things I am trying to do in my riding is get the VIA Rail train to be a commuter train. That would be a positive way to get people off the roads and onto the rail system.
First, giving an incentive for transit passes would not achieve a great deal. Second, it would give benefits to people who already use public transit. Third, it seems unfair because a lot of communities in Canada do not have the advantages of public transit.
In conclusion, I am opposed to the legislation although I thank the member for Jonquière for bringing the issue to the floor of the House of Commons.