I want to take this opportunity to thank the committee for inviting SARM to appear here today to give a rural perspective on transit and some of our issues.
SARM is an independent association that represents all 296 of Saskatchewan's rural municipalities. Membership is voluntary, and our strength comes from our members whose collective voice guides us in policy.
The issues that are of greatest importance to SARM members are issues that impact the quality of life and the productivity of rural communities. SARM wants to again thank the committee for allowing us this opportunity to present and to bring attention to rural transit issues.
In reviewing testimony from the last hearings, we were pleased to see that a number of committee members raised the need for some rural focus and clearly understand that all Canadians deserve access to basic transportation. We are aware that in a time of economic challenges, it is difficult for governments to commit large amounts of funding to new national programs.
We are here today to say that SARM recognizes the challenges of our urban counterparts with regard to public transit. We are also here today to tell you about the unique transit challenges that we face as rural municipalities and communities in Saskatchewan.
When you think of rural communities, you don't normally think of public transit, but there is an important part of the rural population that relies on public transit systems to access essential services and employment opportunities. In addition, rural Canada houses the industries that fuel growth in the rest of Canada. The natural resources, energy, agriculture products, and raw materials extracted from rural areas now make up 50% of Canada's exports. This generates positive economic benefits to all levels of government through the revenues they generate, the people they employ, and the taxes they pay.
SARM is here today to advocate on behalf of our membership and to ask that rural areas not be forgotten when federal transit strategies are created and funding is allocated, either through the national public transit strategy or as part of the next national infrastructure program.
It is a well-known fact that the majority of health, education, social services, and other provincially and federally funded essential services that used to be more readily available in rural areas have been centralized in strategic urban centres across Canada. A good example to draw on is the ability of rural citizens to access quality health care.
In 2001, the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada indicated that 14.9% of Canada's physicians practised in rural areas in 1991. By 1996, this number had dropped to 9.8%. The same report projects the ratio of physicians per 1,000 population in rural areas to decrease from 0.79, in 1999, to 0.53 by 2021.
This report also states that rural hospital closures and centralization of many health services in larger cities means that rural residents have more difficulty accessing services.
In order for Saskatchewan residents living and working in rural Saskatchewan to access such essential services, they need to have options via publicly funded and reliable transit services. Special consideration needs to be given to the portion of rural population that cannot travel by private vehicle to access such services. The elderly, the youth, the disabled, and low-income families with limited or no access to a private vehicle cannot drive to schools and hospitals, etc.
According to Statistics Canada's 2008 “Rural and Small Town Canada Analysis Bulletin”, Canada's rural population is older than the urban population. Within predominantly rural regions, 15% of the population is senior, compared to 13% in predominantly urban regions.
Industry housed in rural areas needs to have access to a reliable base of employees and often in rural areas this base is spread out and is not concentrated in a centre. They also need to be able to access cost-effective transit options to ship or to have shipped to them products such as office supplies, computers, IT hardware, and components used in the fabrication of products, as well as being able to ship finalized products to their customers. Home-based rural businesses rely especially on such services.
The transit of employees to and from work and the transit of goods being shipped via public transit to and from rural industries are important both to the overall productivity of rural-based industries and to the livelihood of rural citizens. This is something that all rural Canadians should have access to, and government funding from all levels should be allocated to such transit companies, to be maintained in the future.
If the government decides to proceed with a national public transit strategy, cost-shared federal government funding earmarked for rural transit needs must be allocated. This transit provides those in rural communities who do not have the ability or cannot afford to drive with a reliable and sustainable transit option to access essential services, and therefore, it is a public good.
It should not be solely the responsibility of municipal governments to fund such systems. It must be earmarked so that rural municipalities are not competing with urban municipalities for the same lump sum. It is hard to fairly rank and compare small-scale rural projects that might service smaller populations over a vast area to urban projects that service large populations in a more concentrated area.
Municipalities should contribute funding, but federal and provincial government funding should be made available also. This funding should be provided outside of what is provided by the federal gas tax fund, as that funding is already fully allocated to service roads, water systems, and other tangible infrastructure in rural municipalities. It should not only fund new initiatives, but should also support existing transit solutions, such as, in Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan transportation corporation, which is currently offered in the province of Saskatchewan, to ensure the long-term sustainability of companies and our citizens.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transportation, Infrastructure and Communities.
Thank you for having me here today. My name is Carolyn Kolebaba, and I am the vice-president of the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties, the AAMDC.
Our association represents 69 rural municipalities and about 95% of the land mass in Alberta. Since 1909, we have helped rural municipalities achieve strong, effective local government.
The AAMDC is proud of our long-term relationship with our federal counterpart, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the FCM. Our president sits on the board of directors, and our executive director is active in FCM's administration functions. As vice-president, I sit on the FCM transportation, environment, and northern and remote communities committees.
I would like to thank you for giving the AAMDC the opportunity to speak in front of you today on this important topic.
Rural transit is an important consideration when discussing a national public transit strategy, due to the realities of rural poverty and the economic engine that lies within our rural areas.
To begin, it is important to realize that poverty in a rural area is a different reality than poverty in a metropolitan area. For instance, if a person has a minimum-wage job in the city, he or she may have access to affordable housing and public transportation. In the country, the same person would have less access to affordable housing and would need to prioritize paying for a vehicle before attending to other needs. The lack of consideration of rural areas in a transit plan would ignore the reality of rural poverty.
When it comes to the effect of rural transit for seniors, a recent U.S. study stated that men outlive their driving careers by seven years, whereas women outlive theirs by ten years. As our nation ages and many people live out their lives without access to a car for more than an entire decade, the lack of a transit strategy for rural areas will become more apparent. The lack of access to a private vehicle and the transit deficiencies in rural areas will result in seniors having unmet needs.
In fact, a 2008 study showed that rural seniors have more unmet needs than their urban counterparts. Even the Senate has identified this problem. As stated in the report of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry in 2008, “Beyond Freefall: Halting Rural Poverty”, the lack of public transportation represents a serious problem for seniors, the disabled, and low-income rural citizens.
In fact, that report made the recommendation that the government commit to 50% federal and 50% municipal funding for new rural transportation infrastructure. It also recommended a study on how to coordinate existing rural transportation services to create a flexible network that would provide extra transportation services to rural citizens.
In Alberta, we are currently beginning the transition to deregulate bus systems. Because of changing business models and the inflexibility of an old regime, Greyhound was no longer able to serve all areas of Alberta without government support. As such, the Alberta government chose to deregulate the industry and allow smaller players to enter the industry.
However, on October 1, Greyhound halted service to multiple communities, and to date there are few people stepping in to take its place. While we are hopeful that gaps will be filled as entrepreneurs come forward, there will likely always be gaps in service. This will only exacerbate transportation issues among seniors and low-income residents. Consideration of this issue by this committee is important for rural Alberta.
Our association would classify needed transit in rural areas into two categories.
First are the commuter trips that take people from the outlying areas of a region into an industry hub or larger centre. These trips may be up to 100 kilometres one way and are daily occurrences for which most people tend to use private vehicles. Getting serious about reducing greenhouse gases, lengthening the life of road infrastructure, and making sure that people can affordably get to their jobs would involve addressing these traffic patterns within regions.
Second are the trips needed by people who do not have access to vehicles, as I previously described. These trips are less frequent and have residents finding ways to get from their communities to a larger centre. Such trips are commonly needed, whether it is for medical appointments, shopping for items not available in their communities, or visiting family.
It is this hub-and-spoke system that is under threat in Alberta and other regions. A national transit strategy would be incomplete if it failed to consider the needs of this minority as consumer demand decreases for large bus companies across Canada.
In summary, industries rooted in rural Canada—farming, forestry, fishing, and natural resources—account for more than 50% of our national exports, and they provide the energy, food, and raw materials that fuel growth in the rest of the country. Without effective and efficient rural transportation of people, goods, and services, rural Canada will not be able to continue contributing to Canada's economic success.
Therefore, cost-shared federal government funding earmarked for rural transit needs to be allocated, because we believe it is not solely the responsibility of municipal governments to fund these systems. This money must be earmarked for rural needs so that rural municipalities are not competing with urban municipalities for the same pot of money. Rural Alberta municipalities should contribute, but government funding should be made available in a fifty-fifty cost-sharing arrangement, as suggested by the Senate committee's report.
Lastly, this funding should be provided outside of what is provided via the federal gas tax fund, as that funding is already fully allocated to servicing roads, water systems, and other infrastructure in rural municipalities. The long-term infrastructure plan promised in the last budget would be the ideal program within which to earmark funds for rural transit. This program could then deal not only with, again, the infrastructure deficit, but could address the rural transit deficit as well.
Thank you for your time today. I will try to answer some of your questions.
Now, in Clearing the Path, there was a transportation subcommittee, which you didn't sit on, but Jim Hallick did.
Mr. David Marit: Yes.
Mr. Jamie Nicholls: So SARM had input there as well. From what I understand, they came to the conclusion that there needs to be investment in order to carry primary weights on secondary roads. But today we're talking more about transit, so that's where I'll direct my questions.
In rural Saskatchewan, that usually means inter-municipal transit, I take it?
Mr. David Marit: Yes.
Mr. Jamie Nicholls: So we're talking about the STC or Greyhound. Those are the primary players in the market...?
Mr. David Marit: Right.
Mr. Jamie Nicholls: I was happy because I saw that the STC had a 10% increase in ridership last year, so people seem to be valuing the service more and more, They choose to ride with the STC for various reasons, some of them being convenience, environmental benefits, and the ability to relax or be productive onboard.
The STC receives subsidies from the CIC, the Crown Investment Corporation, to fund less used routes. So it has developed a way to fund these less used routes, whereas a private company like Greyhound might cut the route because it's not profitable, correct? We have a similar service around Montreal. It's called the CIT. How could they learn from the progress that the STC has made on these issues?
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Would our witnesses be so kind as to use their little devices in order to bring the two solitudes closer together?
Mr. Marit, you used the expression “matter of commitment”. I really like that expression. Ms. Kolebaba also talked about quality of life, governance and the government's role at all levels. I understand that.
We have been talking about funding in particular. I would like to start with that. You are saying that the gas tax cannot be used because it is already being used for infrastructure. Do you think we should raise this tax to be able to provide other services or should we have a dedicated fund for infrastructure with a national public transit strategy? At any rate, we cannot have a national transit strategy if we don’t have an infrastructure strategy. At some point, we have to choose between rail and road. We are talking specifically about using those funds to maintain roads.
One of the problems we often encounter in Quebec is that the infrastructure has deteriorated over many years. As bus drivers say, we are moving backwards. What do you think about that? Where is the funding going to come from? The question is for the two witnesses and Ms. Kolebaba.
I am in favour of a dedicated fund for infrastructure with a transportation policy. You want to use a 50-50 approach. The Building Canada Fund can use the one-third, one-third, one-third formula. While respecting jurisdictions, are we able to have a real strategy involving a relationship between the Canadian government and the municipalities? Should we strictly be dealing with the provincial government? I know that the situation is very tricky in Alberta and in Quebec. Should we say that we will sign an agreement with a province and that we will make sure there is a dedicated fund for municipalities?
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I'll start, Mr. Chair, and take a crack at that.
When we're looking at funding, there's one thing we've been requesting for a long time--and I think it's something we must have--and that's a long-term infrastructure strategy. We need to have that with the federal government, the provinces, and municipalities. In that envelope, I think everything is there.
It has to be part of it. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about transit. It doesn't matter whether in rural Saskatchewan we're talking about roads and bridges, which are in dire need of repair, too, just as they are across Canada, or, as we talked about, whether we're talking about water and waste water through the Building Canada fund. In my province, there would be communities that would be in great difficulty today if the Building Canada fund hadn't come along and assisted them with water and waste water, because of the regulations and because of the changes they had to make. That was an excellent program
Now we have to move forward to 2014 as we start to have this discussion. I think it's important that we, as municipal leaders, are part of that discussion on the funding and how it's to be allocated. You raised a very interesting point about provincial jurisdiction and municipal jurisdiction. That is causing concern for many municipalities. Some provinces have excellent working relationships with the municipal organizations within their boundaries, and some have more strenuous ones. I think we simply have to work through that to make it right.
At the end of the day, we're here to serve the same people. That's the key and fundamental point. These people live in all jurisdictions and all parts of this country, and they're all entitled to and deserve adequate services.
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Mr. Chair, transit in rural Alberta does not respect boundaries. I'll use Lloydminster as one example. The citizens of Lloydminster interreact.
I would suggest that a lot of our rural citizens travel through 10 or 15 municipalities to get to where they need to go, whether it's for health or whatever, so I would suggest that we--the federal, provincial, and municipal governments--are all here to support the one taxpayer. The assistance that's needed in those areas is a formula that I think in rural areas should be addressed in terms of their geographic size, their lack of population, and their necessity. With our seniors, when we questioned them and did a survey, they had the five As: availability, affordability, acceptability, accessibility, and adaptability. So somehow we need to come up with something that's not a cookie-cutter solution.
You asked about the gas tax and whether we should add on there. I would defer to you as a more knowledgeable person on that one, but I think the formula, however it is created, definitely has to respect the rural distance factor. I know it's a tough one, but--
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I believe that. The issue here is on the governance--I'm a Quebecker, so I'm like an Albertan, I'm a rebel with a cause--
Voices: Oh, oh!
Hon. Denis Coderre: --so what I'm saying is that we have to find a way to make sure that this country is not one size fits all.... It's a matter of quality of life. Rural people have their needs and their quality of life has to be respected. You don't ask.... There, the kids are leaving home because of the accessibility and all of that. I understand that. Now let's work on the doable part of it. That's the basic issue regarding what we're doing here, so we need recommendations.
With regard to the gas tax, both of you said that it's already used and it's the same pocket that's paying. You always have the problem with per capita, and we all know that, so you need a new deal with what should be the government's role, because at the federal level it's not their business to take care of municipalities. But at the same time, this country will flourish if we have a new reality through the municipalities, so we have to find a way.
What do you recommend and, specifically on the money issue, where will it come from? Are we talking about a private-public partnership? Are we talking about changing the way we spend money? Where should it come from? Do you like those questions...?
The Chair: You have 30 seconds.
Mr. David Marit: Thirty seconds?
Voices: Oh, oh!
Hon. Denis Coderre: Now you know how I feel.
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That's why you folks are in Ottawa: to make those decisions on where the money comes from.
If I may, though, I do want to comment on one point you made about P3s. We've found that in rural Canada, and in rural Saskatchewan, P3s to some degree.... I think the federal government has to look at P3 design to make it work better for rural use. P3s are great where there's a need, and if you look at where the P3s are, usually they're in the larger cities across Canada.
That's fine, but in rural Canada we have to find a way to make P3s.... I think there's an opportunity we're missing. I think it's an opportunity for the federal government, the private sector, and municipal leaders to look at it on the rural side to make it work. I think there's something we should be doing there; it's something we should look at. Right now, the P3 formula, the way it's set, doesn't work for rural application because of the standards and measures that are there.
Through you, I'd like to welcome our witnesses today. I appreciate their comments.
I served as a municipal councillor in British Columbia, and I know it's certainly a difficult process. I appreciate your work on behalf of the municipalities in your areas.
With respect to the Building Canada plan, infrastructure programming was designed on the basis of broad-based programs where federal funding could go to a number of investment categories, such as local roads, waste water and water infrastructure, cultural and sports infrastructure, as well as transit infrastructure.
Do you favour such broad-based omnibus programs where municipalities do have the flexibility in terms of investment categories, or do you favour a single or dedicated fund where federal investments can be made in only one specific infrastructure asset--for example, investments in transit infrastructure only?
I think we have to stay with broad-based. I think it's important that we do. Then, within the broad-based program, we have to start to detail it a bit more, whether you get into transit or whether you get into rural infrastructure or other infrastructure.
We've had a very good look at what the Building Canada fund did and the good things that came out of it. As I said earlier, some great things have come out of it. I think we have to look at needs that have to be addressed. If you look at the province of Saskatchewan in terms of the Building Canada fund, for the rural Saskatchewan component--rural is what I represent, which is roads and bridges in rural municipalities--we got 4% of the fund allocation. The reason was that....
I'm not saying anything negative about the plan. I have communities that.... My own community is a good example. If we hadn't had a water project, the community would be in dire straits.
We can work on our roads and bridges at a level that we have to, but I think we have an opportune time here, as we move forward into 2014, to look at the program design, to look within the parameters of the fund, and say, “Okay, what can we do to make this a little bit better?”
We're not asking for the world. We're just asking for something.
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Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.
With regard to the comment on transportation, yes, roads and bridges are very important to us, but we're here today talking on transit, and thank you for that.
As for what it is in Saskatchewan, as I said in my statement, in rural Saskatchewan I don't know of a publicly funded para-transit bus, other than the fact that we have STC moving seniors. For the most part in rural Saskatchewan, it's volunteers or it's family members, and that's a great thing. We pride ourselves on volunteers and people working within the communities.
My colleague has stated that there are no boundaries when it comes to transportation needs. We have to move the people who need the services, where they need them, and as I said in my opening statement, when you see health care facilities consolidating and schools consolidating and issues like that, it has a huge impact on rural Saskatchewan as a whole. It's a way of life. We're an agriculture-based province. When people need special transportation methods, the need has to be looked at.
It doesn't mean that we can't look at it in our municipal system, because it can work that way, similar to what STC does. But as I stated earlier, it's a crown corporation that loses money every year. There are probably things they could do better, but I think there are things we can do through the federal government, through the provinces, and through the municipalities to coordinate an effort that could work and would be beneficial.
Nothing says that a transit bus can't transport both seniors and special needs people to facilities. Maybe that, in some of the design and some of the cooperation with all levels of government, is what we should look at.
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On that note, the word I keep hearing is coordination and having a comprehensive plan.
I have a private member's bill before the House of Commons that is being debated at second reading on Wednesday. It didn't come from me. It actually came from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
The vision is that the federal government can take a leadership role and bring together, let's say, Saskatchewan with SARM, and Alberta together with your organization, plus some of the big-city mayors, and then, province by province, municipality by municipality, ask what the plan would be. For example, what would the plan would be for rural Saskatchewan? What would it be for the bigger cities, whether that's Saskatoon or Regina? How would the transit system work to ensure there are connections between smaller towns and the cities that the local municipalities can afford, and not just through their property tax?
Once you have a plan, you can work out who pays for what and whether it is delivered by the municipalities, the provinces, Greyhound, the private sector, or someone who owns a van or taxi service--whatever--but you must at least have a comprehensive plan to decide who pays for what and how. In the long term, say 10 or 20 years, who is going to fix the bus or upgrade it? Things fall apart, so when you get a chunk of money to buy new buses and they fall apart, who is going to fix them? Will the municipalities have to fix them from their property tax?
Having that plan and discussion would I think lead towards some kind of stable, predictable funding, so that the service level would be stabilized. Right now, it seems that it's boom and bust. Sometimes the money comes and sometimes it doesn't. It depends on the government, the provincial or territorial governments, and if the program is designed to be cost shared, sometimes the municipalities just don't have the money to do so.
Is that the role you want the federal government to play in the first instance? Of course, it needs to be backed up with some kind of funding to ensure that it's not just 4% of the Building Canada funds that rural Saskatchewan would receive.
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Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
In our situation, we already have a system in place. It works, and we are moving it along: we just need additional dollars to make sure it continues.
I don't think a huge bureaucracy built around the transit system is the answer. I believe that municipalities are fully aware of spending that money in the best way they can. As for allocating dollars towards transit, excellent, and then ensure the municipality is doing that through of all your paperwork that comes along with it on the accountability side.
I'm pretty sure it can be simplified. It just needs to be addressed. How you do it through the national strategy, when you look at it, is something that the associations would gladly speak to you about, more than our time here today permits.
It is a need. Don't forget the rural areas, because they need to move the disabled, seniors, and youth. We need to do this in order to ensure that we are all healthy.
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Because I think there's a role for the federal government in this, and I think there's a responsibility for the federal government in this, in servicing transit and its needs. I've lived in rural Saskatchewan all my life. I'm quite capable of driving where I have to go for what I need to do.
This hits really close to home, and Mr. Chair, I hope I can get through this. We were very fortunate that when our son was born 26 years ago he was very healthy. Three weeks later, a sister-in-law and brother-in-law had a handicapped child born in the city of Saskatoon. He's still in a wheelchair, and it has been 26 years.
If that had been our son, I would have had to make a decision as to whether I was leaving the farm or whether my son was leaving our house, and that's an awful thing to say. Or I would have had to equip a bus and I would have had to take him to a special school.
He is in the city of Saskatoon and is being picked up every day by a bus that takes him to a special school, where he is educated and is working in the community today.
Those are the things that have to be looked at.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, I'm here representing 70,000 supporters from across Canada. We are Canada's largest and oldest taxpayer advocacy organization, proudly non-partisan, and funded solely by voluntary contributions from supporters. We've never accepted government funding of any kind—we never will—and we're not a charity.
As we discuss the concept of a national transportation strategy, it's important that we have some context. The government just reported a budget deficit for last year of $33.4 billion. It's interesting to note that revenues surged $18.5 billion from the year previous, a healthy rise of 8.5%, bringing the government to within $5 billion of the record revenues reached in 2007-08. Yet just three years prior, those record revenues were sufficient to throw off a surplus of nearly $10 billion, while in this past year the government ran a deficit of $33.4 billion, owing to surging annual expenses that shot to over $270 billion from $233 billion in the same time frame.
So to the extent that government revenue was sufficient last year to have generated a surplus if the minority Parliament had merely held the line on spending, we now have a spending problem, and a major spending problem at that.
In the context of four years of massive deficits that erased 10 years of progress in reducing Canada's federal debt, we approach the proposition of a national transit strategy with some trepidation. We note the enthusiasm of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for such a strategy. In their brief, the FCM put forth the notion that they represent 90% of Canada's population and they argued for more money from Canadian taxpayers to fund municipal transit systems.
Look, we have sympathy for Canada's city governments. They have built the lion's share of Canada's roads, and for years they had to witness the federal government collecting a user fee for roads, in the form of a gasoline excise tax, while not spending any of the money on roads at all. So we do support the transfer of the gas tax to cities for road projects. We would rather that all the revenue from the gas tax be directed towards roads and bridge-building and maintenance and we'd rather that the municipalities and provinces collect the revenue, rather than delegating the job to the federal government and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
Let's be clear: the Government of Canada has no reason to collect an excise tax on gasoline, except for the obvious and disheartening reality that it can, so it does.
Of course, the Government of Canada has spent $5 billion on transit since 2006, including $1.1 billion in gas tax revenue that it rightfully ought to have invested in roads and bridges, not transit systems. Once the diversion of the gas tax into transit began, it failed to satisfy the demands of the FCM and city governments, which see only the insufficiency of the federal financing.
So let's not kid ourselves: the concept of a national transportation strategy, especially as set forth in the official opposition's proposed legislation, is nothing more than a money grab. The so-called legislation contains no strategy, only the proposal that the government convene a conference and gather a group of money-seekers together to draw up a list of demands and submit them to Parliament.
In case there's any confusion that this is something other than a naked cash grab, the province of Quebec is fully exempt from any strategic element of the strategy at all. The bill only provides that any element of strategy that would have an effect on Quebec's sovereign soil simply be monetized, turned into a federal cheque, and handed over to the National Assembly.
The relevant passage says, “Recognizing the unique nature of the jurisdiction of the Government of Quebec with regard to...transit”, and ends with the statement that Quebec shall “receive an unconditional payment of the full federal funding that would otherwise be paid within its territory under...” the title of the legislation--
An hon. member: [Inaudible--Editor]
Mr. Gregory Thomas: Yes, entitled “National Public Transit Strategy”, so--
An hon. member: [Inaudible--Editor]...Quebec?
Mr. Gregory Thomas: We have no quarrel with Quebec's jurisdiction over transit, but we don't submit that it's unique. We think that provinces have jurisdiction over transit. Perhaps if Parliament stopped collecting a heinous excise tax on gasoline, the provinces could go and tax it, fund away, and do what they like.
We were recently asked to comment on proposed tolls to finance the replacement of the Champlain Bridge in Montreal, in a radio interview, and the interviewer was shocked to hear that we enthusiastically support them. I had to point out that we're the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, not the Montreal bridge motorists federation, and we believe that those who use a service should pay for it.
So we put it to you that the FCM, collectively, have been proven to be bad managers of taxpayer dollars, and they should not be rewarded with more federal money for more municipal empire-building. We put it to you that voter turnouts in municipal elections are woefully low, way short of 90%, and that the municipal politicians are principally beholden to people on city payrolls who extract outsized pay packages, benefits, and pensions in exchange for their support, and also to people who buy land as far as possible from transit, schools, municipal infrastructure, and other amenities, and then proceed to build housing on it.
Here in Ottawa, you just need to look at last weekend's daily papers to see ads for new housing located nowhere near any transit.
City governments cheerfully approve these projects, extract massive development cost charges for parks, street lights, sidewalks, street trees, and then send their lobbyists to you to demand billions for elaborate transit systems to get all these newcomers to their distant jobs. The cities’ approach seems to be to fill pastures with two-car garages, and then demand federal assistance for ever wider roads and ever more elaborate transit systems to prevent their regional economies from collapsing into gridlock.
An hon. member: Tell us what you really think.
Voices: Oh, oh!
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At the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we do not buy into the concept of redistribution of wealth as something that is a public good. We believe that wealth is earned and that taxes are levied to provide public services to the public, so any element of redistribution of wealth is not going to be something that meets with our support. We would even argue that in a place like British Columbia, the HST was voted down because it had this element of redistribution of wealth in it that was excessive.
With regard to the whole question of the federal excise tax on gasoline and the transportation strategy, I think there's a historic opportunity here for the opposition and the government to get together. Both the government and the official opposition support the notion of Quebec's jurisdiction in this area. I think it's not too big a stretch to extend that notion to the jurisdiction of the great provinces of Ontario and Alberta and every other province, and to the idea of the government's just getting out of levying excise tax and giving that space to the provinces.
Also, rather than just proposing that others come together and work on a strategy, I think a strategy that encourages governments to price the service they're providing.... In British Columbia, the Port Mann Bridge is going to be a $3.3-billion improvement. It's the same deal with the Champlain Bridge in Montreal; it's a multi-billion-dollar expenditure.
If you go on the 401 in Toronto, it's plugged 24-7.
These are multi-billion dollar transportation investments that aren't priced at all. They're treated as free goods, so people build big houses with two-car garages at either end of them and plug them up. It's a disaster. It's an economic disaster for everyone.
As for the idea that we can sit here in Ottawa and strategize on how to unplug the city of Toronto better than they can do it themselves on the ground, I don't think that idea holds water.
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Well, on areas of their own jurisdiction, certainly.
The fact is that the federal government doesn't have jurisdiction in road building or transit building, and yet it levies taxes on transportation fuels. This has created this resentment in city governments, and with provincial governments, which are saying, look, you're levying taxes on transportation fuels, and historically none of this revenue has made its way back to Montreal, Toronto, Sherbrooke, or wherever, in the form of roads, buses, or what have you.
This elaborate mechanism has been evolved for the government to take tax it shouldn't be levying. Give it back to the people who should be levying the tax so they can use that money to build roads.
We didn't write the Constitution in the 1800s. If anyone thinks that city transit ought to be a federal responsibility, you could propose rewriting the Constitution. But it probably makes sense that city transportation, transit, ought to be a city responsibility, and they ought to have the means available to pay for it.
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No, you're not correct, because the bridge is an investment not only for the local economy, but for all of eastern Canada.
[Translation]
You are making the Tea Party sound like herbal tea drinkers. Having been part of a government before, I know that it has to make investments. So taxes are supposed to be used for services. I agree with you on that.
In basic economics, infrastructure is what brings in investments. When there are investments, there is wealth and the wealth turns into services. But the government is not a company. It has to provide services, and not just in Montreal. There are also taxpayers in rural regions and they are entitled to those services. But if they have no transportation or infrastructure, we have a problem, Mr. Thomas.
I am a radical centrist. I try to find a balance between the two. Yesterday, Richard Martineau was on Tout le monde en parle, as you might have seen, Mr. Chair. He is not really a leftist and he said that, in order to get depth perception, you need a left eye and a right eye. I really liked that. So we need to figure out how to get some depth perception.
I agree with you on the issue of accountability. We have to find ways to be accountable so that the money is well spent. But are you telling us that we should not take care of public transit, that it is not our problem and that we should not have a national transit strategy? I don't agree with that, but I can respect your point of view.
Or are you saying that we should perhaps review how we invest our money in order to make sure that people get services? Not everyone has big houses and two vehicles. Some people don’t have that many resources, but they want to protect the environment. So they invest in public transit. What role do governments play in that?
Finally, did I hear correctly that you want to scrap the gas tax? If so, does that mean transferring taxation power to the provinces and municipalities so that they can do whatever they want with the money? Is that what you are telling us today? I am just trying to understand.
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That's my sense of humour. It was supposed to be funny. It explains the two solitudes. We sometimes have good concepts in French that cannot really be translated. It just means that, even though our opinions may be well thought out, politics, like life, is made up of nuances. We cannot just say that that's the way things are, that things are bad and that everyone is like that and that we shouldn't get involved.
Mr. Thomas, with all due respect, I commend all organizations asking that money be well spent. The government's role is also to make sure that everyone has services, wherever they are, from coast to coast to coast.
Did I say “coast” three times? Is that what I said? The other “coast” is the American border.
The Canadian government has a role to play. I come from Quebec and I want us to respect the Constitution. I understand that we might have to invest and we have to make sure that everyone can play a part. But you are telling us that there is no part to play and that, on top of that, the federal government should remove the gas tax. I feel there will be inequities among municipalities. It is not just about the municipalities. It is also a matter of citizenship. Everyone has a right to have the same quality of life and belong to the first class, whether they live in a rural or urban area.
We need to have guidelines on how to spend the money. We have to invest, since we are not going to let people starve. One way is to invest in infrastructure. The Canadian government, with the support of the official opposition, decided to invest in order to protect our economy by providing services to people, as it did a while ago.
I actually respect your point of view. I am just asking you to look at the subtleties. It is important for the government to play its part and to provide services to people.
Mr. Chair, I could talk for hours but I am going to stop here.
For the benefit of my colleague, there's a fourth coast: Ontario has over 1,000 kilometres of coastline on its southern boundary, so why don't we just stick with sea through to sea, which is our motto? guess?
Thank you to our witness for appearing. This will be a very different round of questioning. Admittedly, your position among the witnesses has been very unique. Everyone to this point has supported, in some measure, a national transit strategy of some nature. You're the first one who has outright rejected the concept, so I'm not sure if I can ask questions now about the contents of a potential national transit strategy.
But you do raise something that, through the course of listening to witnesses, began to gnaw away at me a little. A professor appeared here, testifying as an individual, and I posed a question to him about what the idea of a transit strategy is attempting to solve and whether or not it's trying to solve something that's actually federal in nature.
The question I raised is that we likely have a problem with the densification of municipalities as to whether they're sufficiently densified, compounded by the revenue problem for municipalities with respect to provincial downloading. The question I asked was, “Is the federal government now being asked to pick up the tab for problems that were not its own creation?”
I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Normally you would think that we would disagree with everything the CTF says; however, I also look for points where we can come together. Certainly I could agree with the CTF that we should abolish corporate welfare and that the government needs to ease up on the secrecy and stonewalling they've been doing.
You were in the investment business, and you should know that investments for infrastructure, such as public transit capital, improve productivity in economies by freeing up roads from single-user cars. You talked about congestion. If you had an improved public transit system, you would see less congestion.
To get back to the points on which we might agree with the CTF, in talking about the economic action plan, some of the members of your federation said that much of the so-called stimulus money was funnelled to pet projects that probably won't lead to higher economic growth but certainly will add to the deficit and debt, which means higher taxes in the future. We can certainly see that one of the members spending $50 million in taxpayer dollars on his personal pet projects would probably be something your organization would disagree with.
Another point on which we might agree was that another member mentioned that the federal government--
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I will get to the question.
Another thing on the strategy and planning of the government for infrastructure spending--and I will bring this to transit shortly--is that the CTF talked about the federal government putting up around 9,000 stimulus signs and said that it was part of the government's plan for taking credit for the orgy of stimulus spending.
This member costed it out and said that it cost, if you multiply it across the country and take into account installation costs, about $3.2 million for signage for taking credit.
Now, what we've been trying to do with this transit strategy bill is depoliticize the process so that we can all get on board and improve the economy of this country by finding ways to improve the productivity of our transit systems.
This is my question to you. I will ask you to tell me which of the following would be more likely to gain the support of the CTF membership, putting aside the fact that the members are mostly against public spending, and accepting that, contrary to your position, funding will be transferred to the provinces and those provinces will use the money for their public transit systems. Which of these two would be more likely to gain the support of your membership? Spending with an eye to political gain on pet projects that have questionable economic impact? Or spending on a strategy that irons out the kinks before any money is spent and aims to improve the accountability and funding mechanisms to, in short, eliminate waste in spending?
What I'm saying is that spending is probably going to happen. Wouldn't it be better to have a strategy ahead of time for that spending instead of doing it on a sort of ad hoc basis?
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Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Thomas, for being here.
I'm not quite sure if my NDP colleague who just spoke understood how Canada's economic action plan, the infrastructure stimulus program, worked, because it was actually the municipalities that recommended the projects they wanted funded. I know that in Mississauga there was a unanimous vote by the mayor and members of council as to which 122 projects would be funded in the city of Mississauga.
So when they talk about pet political projects, they weren't the federal government's pet political projects at all. It was municipalities, which understand the infrastructure on the street and what they need in their communities, that recommended to the provincial and federal governments what should be funded. Let's get the facts straight on how that program worked.
Do you support a federal role in funding infrastructure for capital costs, for operating costs, for both, or for neither? Where do you folks draw the line? I think you did indicate that some infrastructure should be funded at the federal level of government. Do you believe the federal government should fund ongoing operating costs for transit systems or just contribute toward capital costs?
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No. We believe that transit and transportation systems should break even or make money, as Greyhound does, for example, and we don't see a federal government role in funding the operations of transportation-operating companies.
With regard to capital and operations, if it's something in a federal area of responsibility, like food inspections or agricultural inspections, we want federal government employees working with the best equipment so they can do their jobs most effectively.
I was reading today that the Department of National Defence owns something like 21,000 buildings, and it wants to cap the size of the army at 68,000 troops, so that pencils out something like one building for every three soldiers or.... It was on the front page of the Citizen today.
That was a long-winded response to your question, but no, we believe in the federal government operating its own infrastructure. We don't believe in the federal government subsidizing municipal or provincial infrastructure.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Gregory. This has been an eye-opening discussion, because I'm hearing a lot of things I like.
I like what you're saying: that sprawl is caused by free roads that then engender a need for public transit. You only have to look at Calgary and see how it has spread north and south dramatically.
We started from the premise that we were stuck with the system we have, that we need something to put some order in the chaos that is public transit systems across the country, systems that are funded, we think, on the basis of too much political manipulation.
But if what you're saying is that we need to move tax points into the municipal system in order for the municipalities to be able to fund public transit, I don't think we disagree. If the funding can be there, if the federal government is willing to take its excise tax--or whatever tax or income tax points--and shift that to the municipalities, do you agree that's an appropriate way to fund it?