Mr. Speaker, the whole idea of having a national transit strategy has been on the agenda for many years. I can recall having discussions on this issue as far back as the late 1990s and it has carried forward. It seems to becoming more of an issue as all levels of government are recognizing that they do have a role to play.
Obviously, municipal governments over the years have recognized they have a leading role in making sure there is on-the-ground service for those individuals who need the services of rapid transit, subways, or whatever it might be.
Provincial governments over the last number of years, and a lot depends on the province and the municipalities within the province, have also recognized that they have a significant role to play. Some provinces, such as the province of Manitoba, provide direct grants and subsidies that go toward ridership and ensuring there is a transit system not only in Winnipeg, but also in other municipalities. The province itself has seen that it has a role to play.
Having said that, there has been a lack of leadership from the national government in recognizing that it, too, has a role to play. Many, including myself, would ultimately argue that the federal government needs to play a much larger role than it is playing today.
That is why in principle many of the different stakeholders across Canada would see a bill of this nature as a positive step forward as we try to come to grips with where we should be going on the whole issue of mass public transit, trains versus buses, to make sure our cities are keeping up with the demand.
The future projections for virtually all of Canada's major cities indicate that significant growth is happening. In some municipalities, it is a fairly profound growth that is taking place. As such, they need to get involved in looking at ways in which they can provide that public transportation.
It is important for us to recognize that generally speaking, municipalities do not have the financial resources or the means to get into these huge capital projects. We are not talking about a few million dollars here and there. It is well into the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on the project. I could cite some specific examples in the city of Winnipeg, but the need for infusion of capital, cash, if I could put it that way, is very high.
It would be nice to see a government take an interest in looking at the bigger picture, looking at the needs of the different municipalities while recognizing there is a very finite amount of money that can be raised at the municipal level.
A vast majority of the funds that get into the city coffers come from property taxes. Property owners will tell us that their property taxes are already high enough. Because of the expenditures that would be incurred if we started investing in public transit, it is just not practical in many cases for municipalities to move forward. Municipalities end up saying that it might make sense to move toward a faster mode of public transportation, but they just do not have the financial resources, so instead they will expedite things by putting in bus-only lanes in order to increase ridership.
That is why, in fairness to municipalities, the federal government needs to come to the table, sit down and start talking about that national strategy with regard to public transportation.
If we recognize that role up front, I believe that at the end of the day we will have healthier communities. We will have communities that would be able to accommodate the potential demand if we could provide the proper mode of transportation. For example, in cities the size of Toronto and Montreal—let us focus on Toronto and Montreal, because Vancouver has the SkyTrain, which is an above-ground mode of travel—there is a great deal of investment in their subway systems.
Back in the days when I had the opportunity to take some university courses on urban development, we talked about how subways and the construction of subways is a long-term project because of the hundreds of millions of dollars required. The impact on development huge. Wherever that subway actually stops, we will see a core of development, quite often, take off to feed into the subway's system. A great example is Canada's largest city, the city of Toronto. Could members imagine if Toronto did not have the subway system it currently has? It would not be able to facilitate the type of demand on growth, on population, if it did not have a reliable subway system.
However, if we were to talk to politicians of different political stripes and at different levels of government, we would find that Toronto's need to expand is very real. It is there. It would be very difficult for a municipality like Toronto to be able to do that without any commitment coming from Ottawa and the provincial government.
That same principle would apply also to Montreal or even, to a certain degree, to cities such as Calgary and Edmonton, which are developing their subway systems.
I had the opportunity last fall to ride the Vancouver SkyTrain. It is an amazing system. It is amazing how quickly one can get from the airport to the downtown core. These modes of transportation are, in good part, what allow our cities to continue to grow.
In Winnipeg we talk about light rail transit and how we could speed up travel in the south corridor, although Mayor Sam Katz has been aggressively pursuing other ways to speed up our bus system.
However, arguments have been brought forward even in the city of Winnipeg as to what potential we have in subway development, because when we look to the future, we want to continue to grow as a city and prosper. That means we need to be able to sit down with the different levels of government so that we can get that joint project.
If we took a look at a lot of major projects across Canada, we would find all three levels of government getting involved in order to turn a project into reality.
In essence, that is what this bill wants to do: develop a public transit system policy through which Canadians would benefit as a whole. That infrastructure needs to be worked on. We can talk about expansion, but we also need to recognize that even the current infrastructure needs repair, more in some areas than in others.
It is important for the federal government to take a serious look at what is being proposed in this private member's bill to see how we can enhance our role here in Ottawa to ensure that we have great public transportation systems that will allow people to travel between larger cities and to commute. That would allow us to continue to grow and prosper well into the future.