Layton vows faster gas tax transfer

Last Updated: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 | 10:58 AM ET

CBC News

The Liberals have had a lock on the city of Toronto for years, but they have done nothing to deal with the issues facing Canada's largest cities, said NDP Leader Jack Layton on Tuesday. His party, he vowed, would do more.

"The Liberals are a Toronto version of a Seinfeld show: a caucus about nothing, and that does nothing," he said.

New Democrats will fight in the next Parliament to speed up the transfer of the gasoline tax to the municipalities, Layton said.

NDP Leader Jack Layton on Tuesday.

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Speaking at a subway station in the Toronto riding where his wife, Olivia Chow, is running as an NDP candidate, Layton said a stronger NDP caucus would press the government to increase the gas tax transfer to the full five cents per litre promised by the Liberals.

The Liberals are currently turning 1.5 cents a litre over to municipal governments, and plan to increase that to five cents a litre over time as part of the so-called new deal for cities.

"Not the long Liberal phase-in plan, no more time for Paul Martin to break his word once more," Layton said. "Right now, five cents a litre."

That, Layton said, would give municipalities an extra $1.4 billion to invest in "sustainable transportation such as public transit in the cities and better roads in rural areas."

Layton said the only way for that to happen is to elect more NDP members of Parliament.

"New Democrats help people get people where they want to go. The Liberals just get in their way," Layton said.

Pointing out that he is the only Toronto MP not from the Liberal party, Layton said the city has not been well served by the Liberals, listing off problems with the city's waterfront development, the Port Authority, tuition at the University of Toronto, and the fact that 2005 was the "worst year ever for smog."

"What voting Liberal does in Toronto is to make problems worse," he said.