Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the private member's bill, Bill C-305, concerning a public transit strategy.
While I appreciate, support and applaud the member for Trinity—Spadina. who proposed this bill, I would like to provide my own perspectives on the whole definition of transit and to arrive at a little bit of a comparison or at least a contrast to other public priorities related to transportation.
Investment in transportation infrastructure obviously is very important to a country as vast, as huge and as densely populated as Canada. Transportation infrastructure is a costly but necessary venture.
The substance of the bill deals with the conveyance of people on that infrastructure. It is about how we provide the means to convey people over an existing transportation network. It is the rail cars on the rail tracks. The transit portion would be the rail cars, the transportation infrastructure would be the rail tracks. The bill focuses in on the transit, on the conveyance of people and goods, but, most specifically, people.
It is worth pointing out that the needs of Canadians are ever evolving when it comes to transit, to transportation infrastructure, our cities modernized, but as well, the needs of our rural communities and our suburbs also change as well.
Often we look at public transit and we assume that it is necessarily a big city issue. In fairness, Bill C-305 does indeed seem to reflect that while there are notions or elements in which communities are invited to participate, generally speaking, this is about city transportation, city transit, intercity transit.
The needs are evolving because, as we know, the government of the day is not demanding the mass mobility of people in rural areas. With its employment insurance reform and conform requirements, it will be expecting citizens to travel up to one hour away from their principal homes to wherever employment may be. That may not seem such a daunting task for some, but when we consider that an hour's travel from a rural area could be over roads that are just not kept up, but, most important, from a transit point of view, travelling one hour's distance from one major city to the suburb of a city to inner city, s a transit system is available to convey those passengers.
For example, for the people of the lower north shore of Quebec to transit one hour's distance from their own community to where a potential job may be available, there is no transit system. It does not exist.
In my own home province and in my own riding, the community of Conche, for example, is a beautiful place, absolutely incredible in terms of not only the scenery but its people. Unfortunately, in the off-season and certain times of the year there are very few jobs. For them to transit just 28 kilometres away to the community of Roddington, for example, they would travel over a dirt road, but, most important, they are expected to do so with no transit system available.
For a single mother, a single person or for someone who is making a very small wage and does not have access to the means to buy a vehicle, that transit is not available to them and they do not have the means themselves.
If I were to make one point on this matter before moving on, it is absolutely essential that this Parliament be seized with understanding that the needs of not only transportation infrastructure but of transit requirements is constantly evolving and we are not keeping up.
While I applaud and will be supporting the private member's bill, I would implore that we look broader and deeper and think bigger when it comes to understanding exactly what the evolving transit needs are in our country. While this is a template and a blueprint for mapping out a strategy for larger cities and their suburbs, it is not an effective means or template for mapping out a strategy for the entire country.
I will also reflect on the fact that while transit is already in play, there are other types of transit systems in which the federal government has an active role. An example is the public transit between Îles-de-la-Madeleine, a small island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and a beautiful part of the province of Quebec, and the province of P.E.I. One of the most significant communication links is not to the St. Lawrence Seaway but to P.E.I. There are other links between Îles-de-la-Madeleine and the port of Montreal but one of its most significant major points of conveyance is between the island and P.E.I.
This bill is about transit. It is about the conveyance of people, goods and services via a mode of conveyance that is supported by the public interest. This bill does not necessarily contemplate the inclusion of those concerns and those needs in with a public transit strategy. I would ask for consideration that the notion of what public transit is all about be broadened from that point of view.
I will also reflect on what the government considers to be public transit. It considers public transit to be that which is available to larger urban centres. However, the provision of a strategy within the transit system is actually funded or encouraged through taxation policy. The government does not actually commit to any public transit strategy that uses the public interest and the public purse to establish the means and mechanisms to advance the strategy. The entire public transit strategy, in the government's point of view, is simply to offset some of the costs to the individual user of that transit system through the taxation system. Specifically, the government grants what I and the majority of people would consider to be a relatively nominal tax rebate on a portion of a limited element of the total fee paid for that transit by the individual. While it is not objectionable, it does not go far enough. It is a very minimalist response to the true needs of the transit and of a transit strategy in this country to offer a 10% or 15% tax credit on payments that are already offered or already provided from the user when the benefits of that tax credit are not realized by the user until as much as 12 to 14 months after the expense has occurred.
It is one thing to talk about a transportation infrastructure strategy but it is another thing to talk about a transit strategy. If we do not have the means to move people because a transit system does not exist, then the availability of a tax credit to individuals seeking work, with the requirements of the pending new EI regulations of having to move up to an hour's distance away from their home communities, is just not valuable. It may be valuable to those who could use it, even with all of its limitations and lack of completeness, what we need in this country is a true strategy and it is, sadly, missing.