Madam Speaker, one month ago, I asked whether the Liberal government would make some of the public transit infrastructure fund available to restore needed bus service between Saskatchewan communities. The context for this question is that five months ago the provincial Sask Party government eliminated the Saskatchewan Transportation Company in hopes that private enterprise would fill the void, but there is still no bus service, even between Saskatchewan's largest cities, Regina and Saskatoon. This lack of bus service has caused many problems.
My original question highlighted the difficulty seniors were having getting to medical appointments. Just today the media reported on a message from Saskatchewan's deputy minister of health, which stated, “Do we co-ordinate medical taxis or other transportation with federal [government] that mitigates STC loss...?” It would be interesting to know how much the Government of Canada has had to spend on medical taxis in Saskatchewan since the closure of STC. Would that money not be better spent sustaining bus service?
This brings me to the public transit infrastructure fund. Of course, this fund is mostly about public transit in urban areas. However, when the Liberal government unveiled this program, it included a lot of language about meeting the unique infrastructure needs of rural and remote communities. This leads me to believe that some of this money should be available to support intercity bus service in Saskatchewan to connect our communities.
This year's budget provided $20 billion to the public transit infrastructure fund and allocated it between provinces according to a formula of 30% population and 70% existing transit ridership. Saskatchewan has more than 3% of Canada's population, but we have less than 1% of Canada's existing transit ridership. According to this formula, we receive only about 1.5% of federal transit funding, in other words only about half of our per capita share of the money. Most federal transfer programs to provinces are allocated on a purely per capita basis.
Therefore, the good news is that Saskatchewan will receive about $320 million from the public transit infrastructure fund. The bad news is that according to our population, we should be receiving more like $640 million. However, at the end of the day, both of those numbers vastly exceed the $85 million that the Sask Party says it will save by getting rid of the Saskatchewan Transportation Company.
Therefore, it should be possible for Saskatchewan to receive our fair share of the public transit infrastructure fund and to use a portion of that money to sustain and restore needed bus service between our communities.