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Tory Claim That Transit Tax Credit Took Out 56,000 Cars Puzzling to Experts

Posted on: Thursday, 19 October 2006, 18:01 CDT

By MICHELLE MCQUIGGE

TORONTO (CP) - Federal Environment Minister Rona Ambrose raised eyebrows Thursday when she credited transit pass tax credits for getting 56,000 cars off Canada's roads.

Ambrose cited the figure as the Conservatives introduced their Clean Air Act, a controversial bill that sets no short-term targets for cutting greenhouse emissions, but instead aims to ease energy consumption in an effort to halve emissions by 2050.

"Just based on the ridership that we have today in Canada, the transit pass tax credit alone is the equivalent of taking 56,000 cars off the road, every day," Ambrose said. "That's a lot of greenhouse gases."

Michael Roschlau, president and chief executive of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, said he was mystified as to where Ambrose was getting her numbers.

"I'm not familiar with those figures," Roschlau said. "They certainly didn't come from us. We have no way of measuring that at this point."

Roschlau said his organization likely won't finish compiling numbers for 2006 until well into next summer.

Danny Nicholson, public affairs supervisor with the Toronto Transit Commission, declined to comment specifically on Ambrose's remarks except to say that he was not familiar with any data that could have produced them.

But Nicholson did confirm that the transit pass tax credits have had a positive impact on ridership in Canada's most populous city, where roughly 850,000 people use public transit on an average weekday.

"Based on very preliminary information, the tax credit resulted in about a 5 per cent increase in past sales," Nicholson said.

Quentin Chiotti, air program director with Pollution Probe, was also puzzled.

"I have no idea where those numbers came from, so it's hard to say if they're accurate," Chiotti said.

Even working on the assumption that the numbers were indeed correct, Chiotti did not share Ambrose's sense of accomplishment.

"Fifty-six thousand cars is a step forward, no doubt about it, but it's a very small step in terms of the national picture," he said.

It was July when Ambrose first introduced the tax credit program, which provides riders who purchase a monthly or annual transit pass worth more than $80 with a 15 per cent tax break.

She predicted at the time that the measure would increase ridership by roughly five per cent and take 110,000 cars off Canadian roads.

The Canadian Urban Transit Association says Canadians took 1.6 billion trips on public transit in 2005.

Source: Canadian Press

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