Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Edmonton Southwest.
It is good to take part in the debate today. There will certainly be one ex-municipal politician following another here.
I spent 18 years as a municipal politician. One thing we always had trouble with when these programs came down from on high was sometimes we only needed two-bit dollars. We only had to throw in a quarter out of a dollar to get something financed and we even had trouble doing that. At the municipal level there is nowhere else to download to. That is it, that is where it stops; the municipal level is where the buck stops. There is only so much load that a property tax can hold.
What we are talking about today is a huge amount of money that the government takes from Canadians through a gas tax that was put in place, whether it was legally done or inferred, to improve the country's transportation system.
Canada is a large country. We do lots of trade east and west and north and south. People are on those highways, whether it is for pleasure or every day trying to make a living, and the infrastructure is falling apart. Our bridges and our roads are a terrible mess.
A country such as Canada that has so many resources, that has been blessed with all kinds of natural resources, should be rolling in industry. It would be, if the government would look at some of the taxes it charges and the taxes that scare people away and the taxes that hurt business.
When we look at east-west transportation particularly on the key trade route which is the Trans-Canada Highway, with the amount of trade on that road every day and the amount of licence fees that are collected by the provinces, that money needs to go back into highways and I believe it does in most provinces. However, the federal government collects the gas tax and does not put its fair share back into the infrastructure. This is causing all kinds of problems.
The member for Wild Rose has brought up in the House time after time the issue of the piece of highway that goes through Banff National Park that needs to be twinned and it has not been. It is a death trap. It was good today that the industry minister stood up and said that the government will finally fix that, but that should have been done years ago. It takes a tremendous amount of pressure from a member of Parliament such as the member for Wild Rose to force the government to act.
The Alliance has brought forward the motion today, and it is similar to a motion that was brought before the House before which was voted down. There is no consistency. The previous member talked about the government being so consistent and the Alliance always changing its mind. The government has flip-flopped on this issue.
I want to read what our leader said at the FCM convention this year. The previous speaker was a part of that organization. Our leader said:
What we are proposing instead is that the federal government permanently vacate a portion of the federal gas tax--say 3 to 5¢ a litre--and allow provinces the option of collecting that revenue.
In order to ensure that this money is not used for other purposes, the transfer of these revenues to provinces and on to municipalities would be conditional on signed agreements that these resources would be used for infrastructure.
That was back in June. The Alliance has had that as a policy. Now the would-be prime minister is running around the country saying basically the same thing.
We also have another policy which states that any tax that was put in for a specific reason, if it is no longer needed for that reason, that tax should be eliminated. If the 1.5¢ a litre was put in to reduce the deficit, when the deficit is gone, the tax should be gone and there is no doubt about it.
This summer we had a crisis in this country to do with the BSE issue and the livestock industry. We have asked if the government would consider reducing the tax on fuel that trucks use to haul products. The trucking industry has been smacked very hard by this problem. There has been no action on that. We have asked the government for other concessions to help relieve some of the financial burden for the truckers and there has been nothing.
Today there was an announcement in the House that the Prime Minister was given an environmental award. Having bad roads, bad infrastructure, and bad streets creates environmental damage because vehicles are idling, standing still, or not moving at the rate they should be and that is an environmental hazard.
That is one of the things we must remember when we are looking at improving infrastructure, whether it is public transit or better roads to keep things moving. It all has a bearing on the environment and we need to remember that. When we are looking at some of these issues, there are many spinoff aspects that come with it.
Just to make it a little more personal, motorists paid $6.9 billion in gas taxes and GST on gas in 2001-2002. That is $220 per Canadian for gas tax and GST alone. One of the things that is talked about most at coffee shops across the country is the price of gas. Every time the price of gas changes it is an issue to people. It is one thing they keep their eyes on.
One thing we have to keep reminding people of is that 35% to 40% of the price they are paying at the pumps is tax. If there was no tax every third tankful would virtually be free. These are the kinds of huge dollars we are talking about that are being collected.
Almost $7 billion is collected in fuel taxes by the government, yet it gives back $118 million into infrastructure for highways. That is unbelievable and completely unacceptable.
In order to get around this, our leader presented a proposal in June that 3¢ to 5¢ of the tax on fuel be vacated for the provinces and that agreements be struck so that money would go to the municipalities in an incremental manner so that it was not money they could take from elsewhere. I think that is fair and I believe the provinces would agree to that.
They realize that the deferred maintenance on infrastructure of all kinds in the country is absolutely astronomical. If we were to look at public institutions, transportation systems and bridges, it would add up into the multi-tens of billions of dollars very quickly.
Therefore, if we are going to build new and improved roads and buildings, we must look at what is already in place. When we start talking about the environment and making buildings more environmentally friendly, that all costs money. That is all part of fixing up the infrastructure that is in place.
The government, after voting against a similar motion this spring, will vote in favour this time. That will be interesting. It will vote in favour this time because the would-be Prime Minister, the former finance minister, is going around the country making promises that he has no right to do because he is not a minister of the Crown. The present Prime Minister calls him nothing more than a backbencher and here he is out setting up first ministers' meetings and making promises on what he is going to do with the taxes.
Therefore, it is very important that this motion be brought to light today to show Canadians that what we are proposing is what needs to be done and the fact that an unauthorized member of the House is going around the country offering to do this when he has no right to do so.