Mr. Speaker, tonight, climate-fuelled wildfires continue across the country, almost 15 times the 10-year average for this time of year.
Upward of 126,000 people across the country have been evacuated because of these fires. We know parents who are keeping their kids home from the playground because the air quality is so bad. Earlier this afternoon, I was pressing for an end to fossil fuel subsidies. I am glad to be back in the House, now after midnight, to keep pressing for solutions, real climate solutions, such as public transit, for example.
For us in Ontario, transportation is the largest source of emissions, at 32%. While electric vehicles may be part of the solution, they also have many drawbacks, including contributing to more sprawl and poor land use planning decisions, the embodied carbon of manufacturing EVs, the rare metals needed to manufacture them, and the fact that owning a car remains out of reach for many in my community.
Canadian transit riders, by comparison, are disproportionately low-income workers. They are women and people from racialized communities. Many cannot afford to drive, and 64% have no access to a car, among those who take transit.
It is why, prior to this year’s budget, I was pressing for the governing party to invest more in public transit, specifically recognizing that municipalities like mine are being forced to raise fares while, in some cases, simultaneously cutting services due to a lack of sufficient investment from higher orders of government, not that there is none, but that it is insufficient.
Specifically, groups across the country such as Environmental Defence and the Canadian Urban Transit Association were sounding the alarm at the time, warning that transit systems are at risk of falling into a death spiral without critical operational support that had run out since the worst of the pandemic. Sadly, the budget missed the mark, with no new transit funds committed.
This is what Nate Wallace, program manager for clean transportation at Environmental Defence had to say: “It is very disappointing to see that this budget does not include much-needed funds to support transit systems now.”
Truthfully, to me, it is a shame that we are even talking about this. If we were responding to the climate crisis at the scale required, we would not just be talking about emergency operating funds. We need to be talking about going a step further, and I believe that the parliamentary secretary may agree with me on this, that we need federal funds so we can scale successful efforts to reduce fares altogether.
One example was started by a friend of mine, Dan Hendry, co-founder and director of Get on the Bus, who piloted a program in Kingston, Ontario, that provided on-bus training and free transit passes to high school students specifically. What was the impact? High school ridership increased from 28,000 rides in 2012 to close to 600,000 rides annually, which is exponential growth in ridership among high school students, by providing training and free bus passes.
Municipal leaders in my community are now looking at this model, and I would love for them to do it. I want young people in the Waterloo region to have better options. However, municipal leaders are having to discuss this without the benefit of federal funds to subsidize it.
My question is this: Will the governing party step up for these emergency funds and go further, recognizing the crisis we are in?