Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today to Bill C-209. I congratulate the hon. member for Jonquière for her consistent and strong commitment to environmental policy in the House.
I heard the Liberal member opposite boast of his government's commitment to public transit. The party that he represents actually committed a paragraph of verbiage to the public transit issue. I am certain that paragraph committed by the Liberals to the public transit system of Canada probably has not had the extraordinary level of impact on encouraging Canadians to take public transit that he may have expected. It is not the first time members opposite have been delusional about their party's red book commitments.
I commend our party's critic, the hon. member for Fundy—Royal, who has been so effective and instrumental in the development of our party's policies on environmental issues. In the last election our platform was highly rated by groups, including the Sierra Club, for its commitment to environmental policies.
On the specific issue at hand, that of incentivizing public transit through the tax system, my first gut reaction from the perspective purely of a tax system is that I do not like to see a tax code complicated through this type of Pavlovian tax policy where we encourage one kind of behaviour with one sort of tax policy and discourage another with a different sort of tax policy.
That being the case and given the overwhelming evidence that public transit is far less deleterious to the environment than individual automobile transit, the member's proposal is quite innovative and should be seriously considered.
I also see the potential for a tax break. Whether or not it complicates the tax code, we should always try to look for any tax break we might eke out of the Liberals. They are not biologically predisposed to lowering taxes by and large, so we should be supportive if they are embracing a tax reduction in any area.
I did hear the Liberal member opposite speak a few minutes ago of the emissions from public transit vehicles. He was disputing the information we heard earlier today relative to the overwhelming positive impact of public transit versus individual automobiles. He should remember that the emissions produced by a bus for the number of people in that bus on a comparative level have about 40 to 50 times less impact on the environment than individual automobile traffic.
While it addresses a very important environmental issue in urban centres, we also need a greater commitment to public transit in terms of a national infrastructure. It is a great notion to create incentives to encourage public transit, but we need a greater commitment on a national level to our public transit infrastructure.
This is becoming an increasingly important issue in smaller or growing cities and municipalities such as the greater Halifax area in Nova Scotia. From a fiscal perspective, if we look at the degree to which the federal government has cut back in recent years from transfers to the provinces, we see that the provinces have been forced into a position of cutting back transfers to cities. We as a country must take a serious look at a federal and provincial strategy to improve public transit infrastructure not just in the large urban centres but in cities such as St. John's and Halifax to serve a wider cross-section of Canadians.
This brings into play the whole issue of how the federal government will deal with the growth or the emergence of city states in Canada, the consolidation of municipalities and the commensurate increases in responsibilities. Some would say that due to the commensurate increase in responsibilities there needs to be an increase in the level of power of some of the consolidated cities that have emerged.
That debate is fraught with all kinds of constitutional landmines. We should not allow the fear of constitutional difficulties to prevent us from looking at real solutions. We should work with our provinces, not ram solutions down their throats, to develop joint strategies to address infrastructure issues, in this case public transit.
All of us who have experienced increased traffic levels and environmental damage by growth in our cities realize that the hon. member's initiative could go a long way to improve the situation in terms of attracting more people to public transit. However we must make sure that we do not ignore the greater issue of ensuring through federal and provincial co-operation that the moneys are there for better public transit infrastructure across Canada.