Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address the House today on the private member's bill introduced by the hon. member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques.
Bill C-303 proposes to amend our Income Tax Act to provide a tax deduction for automobile expenses that forestry workers incur when they travel to work sites that are far away from their homes. Let me recognize right off the bat that the hon. member is attempting to address the needs of that particular workforce. He clearly will have a large number of individuals working in that field in his constituency.
The proposed bill would cover three kinds of expenses. First, it would cover daily out of pocket expenses for operating a motor vehicle. Examples of such costs are maintenance, gasoline and insurance. It would also cover interest charges on borrowing money to acquire a vehicle. Finally, it would cover depreciation costs. At the core, the bill gives a special package of tax benefits to a narrow group of employees.
We are all parliamentarians and Canadians here. It is incumbent on all of us to make sure that we uphold the fundamental principles of fairness and equity in public policy matters and in taxation matters.
I want to try and do my part here recognizing the hon. member's bill, the principles embedded in it and these other principles of fairness and equity.
The bill provides tax relief for only one kind of employment expense, that is, long distance commuting, and only when it is incurred by one kind of employee, that is, a forestry worker. Providing tax relief on this type of isolated, arguably ad hoc basis is problematic from the public policy point of view. Let me raise some concerns about that approach and which may have been overlooked in this bill as it was drafted.
For starters, we know that other groups of employees incur exactly the same kind of commuting costs as forestry workers do. People who work in construction or in the oil and gas sector are obvious examples. They often travel large distances to work sites. I am sure there are other examples as well.
We know that all employees no matter where they work incur some form of a mandatory employment related expense. I could give some examples. There are tools that are purchased by tradespeople: saws for carpenters, paint brushes for painters, hair dryers for hairstylists, some very expensive knives for those really good cooks. There are computers which are purchased by employees for working at home, monitors, hardware for the computer's hard drive and software and there are costs associated with that. Last, a common expenditure is safety clothing purchased by construction workers.
Clearly, employment expenses such as these ones can vary in their nature and their amounts. What strikes me is that there seems to be no reason that one group would be more deserving than any of the others in access to an employment expense deduction.
There is no doubt that employees who incur such expenses would be justified in asking for comparable tax treatment. However, if we were to introduce a general $500 deduction to recognize the broad array of potential employment expenses out in Canadian society, that would mean $1.3 billion per year in revenue forgone in the tax system. Recognizing all the employment expenses beyond the $500 would cost much more in lost tax revenue.
In addition, once we have opened up the door to this type of employment expense, we might not, in fairness, be able to stop just there. For example, there are various types of volunteers in Canadian society who have requested tax relief for their out of pocket expenses. These would include, for example, people who volunteer to provide emergency services and who incur vehicle expenses when they travel to an emergency site or when they go for training. Others include volunteer coaches for sports teams who might drive to practices and volunteers who deliver food and other materials to shut-ins.
Volunteers contribute substantially to our society and their efforts are valuable to all of us. However, extending tax relief to all volunteers and employees in a like fashion would be a very significant undertaking. Statistics Canada reports that there were some 6.5 million volunteers in Canada in the year 2000. Giving each of them a $500 tax credit would cost hundreds of millions of dollars in forgone tax revenues.
In closing, I am concerned about the apparent inequities that the bill would create. I am equally worried that it would place us on a slippery slope of providing unaffordable tax relief across a broad range of as yet unidentified workers.
In light of these shortcomings, I personally will not be supporting the bill. I do commend the hon. member for attempting to address a perceived need in the tax system and while I personally have not found a way to address it, I appreciate his efforts on behalf of his constituents in trying to do it with the bill.