Madam Speaker, I am very pleased, at the end of these two hours of debate, to have received the support of several members of this House regarding the bill that I proposed.
This brings me back to the original reason for this initiative. Some workers in my riding, in a municipality named Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, must travel to Abitibi—a distance of about 1,000 kilometres—to work in the bush. They must get there with a vehicle that they then use in the bush. This is why they use a very sturdy SUV, commonly called a 4 x 4, which is also a gas guzzler.
However, rather than remain unemployed in their town, these workers preferred to travel 1,000 kilometres from home and come back on weekends. They wanted to be able to absorb some of the costs incurred by agreeing to work that far away because, as some hon. members pointed out in their speeches, these costs ultimately jeopardized their ability to have an adequate income to provide for their families.
This is why, at the end of this presentation, I am now asking all the members of this House to support my proposal.
The hon. member for Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île-d'Orléans made a very relevant comparison. Here, on the eve of an election, Liberal members once voted in favour of a bill relating to mechanics, because they were fully aware that, had they not done so, it would have been difficult to explain to their constituents why they had voted against this legislation.
In the current context of the softwood lumber crisis and the reality experienced by these workers, I hope that the House will be as receptive today and that the bill will be referred to a committee, so that it can be reviewed there and become part of the tax legislation, so as to do justice to our forestry workers.