Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary's commitment to changing people's behaviour with regard to CO
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gases and being nice to our environment might not ring quite so hollow if the Liberal government were committed to not having its cabinet ministers' limousines sitting outside chugging CO
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into the air for hours on end while the ministers were in meetings themselves. Perhaps if the Liberals walked their talk it might go a little bit further in adding some credibility to their cause.
I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Nepean--Carleton on this issue. I will be speaking principally in my role as the transport critic for the official opposition and making some comments with regard to transportation.
In mid-February the Liberal finance minister will be tabling a budget in the House, which will be the first budget of a minority government in more than a quarter of a century. It may be more closely scrutinized than any budget in my generation's history. It is a chance to meet the real needs of a growing and prosperous nation. It is a chance to fulfill the promises of elections and speeches past. It is a chance to look ahead.
Today I want to talk about the federal government's obligation to invest in transportation infrastructure and how the Liberal government has frankly failed that task over the past decade.
Improved transportation means a cleaner environment. It means efficient economic growth. It strengthens the quality of life in rural communities. National transportation initiatives have a proud history of uniting and forging unity across our vast nation. One might think that the Minister of Transport understood this. His past speeches and statements including one on December 10, 2004 reported a commitment to freeze airport rents for 2005 and to permanently reduce them thereafter. Presumably he listened to foreign airlines like El Al of Israel and Olympic Airlines of Greece, both of which cited a recent 64% increase in landing fees at Toronto's Pearson airport as reasons to drop service to Canada. A month earlier the same Minister of Transport promised to reach a gas tax agreement with the provinces by Christmas 2004.
Both were good ideas in rhetoric but follow through continues to be a real challenge for the Liberals when it comes to making commitments and promises. Sadly the finance minister has embraced neither proposal in action. It would seem that Canadians either need a more persuasive Minister of Transport or a hearing aid for the Minister of Finance.
Contrary to popular belief, the problem is not a lack of money but rather a lack of political will and leadership. In mid-January the finance department admitted that the Liberal government had received between April 1 and November 30, 2004 fully $10.7 billion more in taxes than it needed to meet its spending obligations. In other words in the eight months following April 1, 2004 the average Canadian, every man, woman and child, overpaid his or her federal taxes by $334.
The Liberal government likes to make promises and then indefinitely postpone their implementation. By talking at length about the problem, the Liberals are able to create a sense of crisis and then position themselves as the saviours by promising and then postponing some concrete action. We have seen it in the past with medicare, the environment, child pornography, Canada's armed forces, and promises to help big cities pay their bills. This is cynical and opportunistic politics at its worst. The only thing it really produces in the end is a growing public mistrust of politicians during election campaigns.
A minority government should be the place for a full and honest debate on how much money the government needs from the average Canadian and what our spending priorities should be. Unfortunately the unique opportunity for a full and meaningful debate of these issues is being overshadowed by topics like same sex marriage and the decriminalization of marijuana. Clearly Canadians have strong opinions on these controversial questions, but however passionate our views may be, we cannot ignore the historic opportunity before us: a long overdue debate on what services and activities the federal government should perform and how best to pay for them.
We hear for example of the impending retirement of our aging population and rising health care costs. The need to grow our economy is obvious but the government seems stuck in the past. Its thinking is largely limited to corporate welfare and politically influenced regional investments, yet opportunities for creative thinking abound. I am going to ask the government to explore some of these new ideas. Consider the following news item.
During the Christmas break it was reported that the port of Vancouver has become so congested with freight from China that importers such as The Bay, Wal-Mart and Canadian Tire are bypassing the west coast and docking in Halifax. When everything is working normally it takes three weeks to move a container from Shanghai to Toronto or Montreal, but this can exceed six weeks when the system at the port of Vancouver is congested. For this reason an increasing number of shippers are bypassing Vancouver, paying 35% more and sending their goods on a 37 day trip through the Panama Canal to Halifax. I am glad that the port of Halifax is growing, but if shippers are bypassing Vancouver when sending their goods to Toronto, we can bet there soon will not be very many Canadians involved in shipments between Asia and New York via Vancouver.
Both of our major railways are competing for a share of the cargo traffic between Asia and the U.S. midwest and the eastern seaboard. Both have based their marine facilities in Vancouver. Therefore, the transportation infrastructure in Vancouver is not just important in facilitating Canadian imports and exports; it has the potential to play a crucial role in enabling U.S.-Asia trade, and dramatically stimulating both the Canadian and B.C. economies as a consequence.
We hear that the Minister of Industry is willing to provide Bombardier with up to $300 million in “research support”. This is presumably on top of the $772 million in grants and repayable loans that the Canadian Taxpayers Federation says the government has granted the company since 1982.
Every dime that Ottawa has paid Bombardier has been justified by the promise of Canadian high tech jobs. We might want to consider similar thinking with respect to some of B.C.'s transportation infrastructure. By improving Vancouver's overall international competitiveness as a transportation hub we create tens of thousands of high paying jobs in B.C. and other points across Canada.
Vancouver is the closest major North American port to Asia. We therefore have to have what Harvard professor Michael Porter describes as a sustainable competitive advantage. The government in the interests of long term thinking might want to examine how best to support the growth and sustain efficient operation of Vancouver and also perhaps Prince Rupert as Canada's contribution to a productive trade agreement between Asia and all of North America.
Let me share with the House some of the ideas that have been proposed and which are certainly worthy of consideration by all parties in this House. With respect to the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert, it has been suggested that the Vancouver Port Authority have the ability to borrow money from financial institutions or capital markets, perhaps even with the ability to issue tax exempt bonds like their U.S. counterparts.
There is a real need to improve the north and south Fraser perimeter roads, the Fraser River rail bridges and other intermodal rail links. We should examine how best to ensure that U.S. west coast ports do not have financial, legal or tax advantages over Canadian ports like Vancouver, Prince Rupert, Nanaimo, Delta and Fraser ports.
There is a need for dramatically increased port security if we are to become a trusted gateway for U.S. customers. It is in our strategic interest to meet or exceed U.S. freight and passenger security standards. This type of security is a public good which should be publicly supported, not user supported. These increased security measures should not be to the detriment of continued efficiency at our ports of entry.
With respect to our rail industry, a recent study recommends that we “consider giving tax credits or accelerated write-offs of investments to double track and/or double stack rail lines so that CN and CP can add capacity and improve efficiency for United States inbound and outbound shippers”.
Again they are new ideas on which we can agree or disagree, but these are ideas that the Liberals have failed to consider, have failed to even put forward for meaningful debate in this House to dramatically increase the standard of living for Canadians.
We also need to look at ways to increase the economic potential of the Vancouver International Airport, to choose one airport. In 2004 the Vancouver International Airport Authority paid over $72 million in rent to Ottawa. This is significantly more rent on a per passenger basis than most other airports. Rent is the single largest cost of running the airport. As of January 1, 2005 that rent increased to $77 million.
On page 15 of a report the B.C. Progress Board argues:
Transport Canada should truly decentralize its mandate to provide for...global competitiveness. Transport Canada currently charges excessively high rents...for the [Vancouver airport] site. [This] inhibits the [airport authority's] ability to develop its full potential, and thus restricts Canada's ability to enjoy the benefits of a fully devolved, flexible and competitive West Coast Asia Pacific gateway airport. The federal government must develop a more reasonable and appropriate rent structure, one that acts as an incentive for [the Vancouver International Airport Authority] to accelerate its efforts and advance the airport's competitive position.
There are all kinds of great ideas out there, important ideas for Canada's transportation infrastructure. There are ideas to add more capacity and increased competitiveness with regard to our airlines; to ensure that grain is getting to markets efficiently so the prairie provinces can enjoy growth and prosperity; to ensure that we do not have traffic congestion at our borders with the United States; to ensure that our ports are operating efficiently and fluidly, so that we can expand our trading opportunities all across the Pacific Rim and to our potentially next largest trading partner, China.
We must do these things. Instead what we have is a Prime Minister who knows nothing but how to dither, a transport minister who cannot make a decision once he has the okay of a blind and deaf finance minister. The Liberal government is absolutely adrift when it comes to transportation policy.
We need new and big ideas. This is yet one more reason that the time has run out for the Liberal government to act. The only way to get these questions truly answered effectively is to kick out the Liberal government and get a new generation of leadership in office with the new Conservative Party.
