Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to do that. What is being done through Bill C-48 and the associated transit funding, which is supposed to be to help the environment, is it is being directed on the basis of where there is public transit already, not where there is growth, not where we need to create transit systems and not where the investment is required. It is being done on the basis of where the transit is already.
It is unbelievably paradoxical. If the purpose of government is to bring about constructive change, to help society to adapt, if we want to encourage more people to take transit, one would think that is where the investment would be put.
The concern is that sprawl is a bad thing. We want to encourage compact, urban form and development. We want to get people out of their cars and onto public transit. Where do we send the money? Not to the places where we are trying to change behaviour, but to the places where people already are riding the transit.
It is unthinkable and it is staggering. As a policy, it is utterly and completely bankrupt. It will not bring about any change whatsoever. In fact it will reinforce exactly the existing disparities in transit between the city of Toronto and all the surrounding 905 areas.
The critics and those in the Liberal government will continue to look glibly toward those who are not riding the transit which does not exist because their governments cannot afford it. Why? Because the taxpayers in that 905 area, where the member for Mississauga South is from, are forced to pay enormous taxes to the federal government. Their average family income has been falling from 2003. In that time the taxes have gone up 16% and average family income has dropped. They are being asked to pay those tax dollars yet they are not getting any money back for investment in their transit system. We are trying to make changes and they are trying to build transit.
From a perspective of anybody who is serious about changing the urban form of our communities and cities, the government is doing the investment backwards. It is particularly ironic when we consider that at the provincial level, policies have been brought in place through greenbelt legislation and otherwise which are designed to do exactly the reverse of that in order to try to put a halt to sprawl and development and to try to encourage greater transit usage. Yet the dollars that are flowing from the federal government will not do that.
To me and to anybody who is an observer of what is needed to make our cities and communities more liveable and to help the economic growth and development of that economic engine of the greater Toronto area, we see a government policy that is perverse, distorted and that will not help to achieve its results.
On the gas tax, fortunately the right thing is happening. The money is being distributed in a fair and equitable way. It is something we have called for on this side of the House for a long time. It has been three and a half years since the Prime Minister first announced he would make it happen. Finally it is beginning to happen. Is there anybody in the House who thinks that if we were not in a minority government, money would be flowing right now? I will bet there is nobody because things like child care were promised 12 years ago--