Mr. Speaker, the transit system across Canada carries 1.76 billion passengers per year. Any investment in public transit dramatically affects the quality of life for millions of Canadians. Any investment impacts on their cost of living and it greatly impacts on the environment.
According to many sources, including CUTA, there are 167 transit infrastructure projects across Canada that would stimulate the local economy of various Canadian communities while improving local transit networks. They are shovel ready. They are ready to go. For many years, different transit commissions and different mayors have been saying that we need the investment now.
What is cruel about this budget and cruel about this motion in front of the House today is that the municipalities or the commissions have no money to match the federal dollars that are being dangled in front of them. Why? Well, let us look at some facts. Of all the G8 countries or even G20 countries, Canada is the only country that contributes nothing to the operation of public transit.
Last year the total operating costs of public transit was $44.5 billion of which 60% was generated from fare revenue, 29% from municipal governments, and only 6% came from provincial contributions. What kind of money does the federal government contribute? Nothing. Zero. Not one penny.
When we look at transit capital costs, in 2006 it was $1.68 billion, and 37% came from the federal and provincial governments. Actually, to be precise, most of it, the majority of it comes from provincial contributions. In the city of Toronto, for example, what was the total federal grants to municipalities? It was 2% of Toronto's $8.7 billion budget. So there is nothing there to be applauded. Twenty-three percent came from municipal governments.
Municipal governments are trapped in high property taxes and high debt because they, alone mostly, are carrying the operation of the transit system. In Toronto, for example, a budget that I am very familiar with, it already has a $1.6 billion capital budget. This year the property tax increase is 4%, and 2% of that 4% is actually a direct result of the Conservative government not being able to change the employment insurance program so that not one extra unemployed worker is going to get employment insurance. They are going to go on the welfare system, therefore increasing the welfare roll in Toronto by 20,000 people. That will cost $38 million, and guess where that money comes from? Property taxes. There is not a chance that many of the municipalities have the funds to cost share this budget proposal, the money that is in front of us.
What is happening across Canada is that there is real ridership growth. Canadians want to take public transit. They want to help Canada decrease its greenhouse gas emissions. They want to reduce their carbon footprint. If we look at transit systems across Canada, there has been a 15% increase in a five year period.
Interestingly enough, the biggest growth in ridership comes from Canada's smallest municipalities, such as Middleton, Charlottetown, Welland and Yellowknife. The greater Vancouver transit link saw an increase of 7 million new trips in the last year or two. Canadians want to take public transit. They want to do something for the environment. For municipalities, more riders means more costs. When a transit system has no funding and not a penny of operating costs from the federal government, municipalities have no choices.
If there are more riders, they either increase property taxes or transit fares. Neither of those are good things to do to stimulate the economy. Municipalities are stuck. In the meantime, there have been reports, including a groundbreaking economic study conducted by HDR Decision Economics, that said that Canada needs a 74% increase in more transit services to unclog roads, save on commuter time and increase productivity. In total, CUTA identified $40 billion of investment needed for the period of 2008-12. This includes the expansion of subways, streetcars and buses, and the maintenance and upkeep of the current system to accommodate more riders.
Unfortunately, the motion in front of the House of Commons is meaningless. The Liberals have the opportunity to amend the budget that is being debated in Parliament right now, whether it is in committee or at report stage tomorrow, by inserting two small clauses. We should allow the funding to flow without cost sharing and have it come through using the gas tax formula so that it is not tied up with red tape, so it is block funding, and so that municipalities and provinces will know in a very assured way that the funding will flow. This instead of the building Canada formula of project-by-project approach, which ties it all up with different legal agreements and various project negotiations that are totally unnecessary.
It reminds me of a short story. A young man, let us call him Mike, walked by and saw a boat sinking. There were 77 people drowning. He could have thrown some rope or helped out, but because he was wearing new shoes he refused to do anything. He refused to help the people who were drowning out there. He went on his laptop and wrote out a perfect plan of how to rescue the 77 drowning people, but he would not do anything. That is what we are facing today. There will be a budget debate tomorrow. The House is debating this right now and we have this motion in front of us. Why should it not be inserted into the budget debate tomorrow?
I move the following motion: That the Liberal opposition motion be inserted into the report stage of the budget implementation bill, Bill C-10, being debated currently in Parliament, and inserted as an amendment.
I hope the House will consider this amendment.