TORONTO — The next federal budget should include incentives for new, cleaner diesel engines, anti-idling technology, as well as more cash for highways and border crossing infrastructure, the Canadian Trucking Alliance is telling Ottawa.

“A glorious opportunity exists to ensure a more rapid uptake of new smog-free truck engines which begin to come on the market at the end of 2006,” CTA CEO David Bradley said today during his appearance before the federal government’s Standing Committee on Finance, which is conducting 2006 pre-budget consultations in Toronto.

The group is calling for faster write-offs for buying trucks with new EPA-mandated diesel engines, which virtually eliminate smog-causing particulate matter and NOx. Accelerated CCA rates (US trucking companies can write off the cost of a tractor twice as quickly as their Canadian counterparts) make it easier for trucking companies to re-equip their fleets, CTA notes.

CTA still beating drums on
national highway policy

In its submission CTA also called for enhancements to the rebate program for in-cab heating and cooling systems by increasing it from 19 to 50 percent of the purchase price of he approved devices; lower relative taxation of ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel which will be introduced in 2006; and parity between the allowable level of meal deductibility for US truck drivers (80% in 2007) and Canadian truck drivers (50%).

Bradley once again decried the fact that Canada still does not have a national highway strategy like all other G-7 nations.

Only five cents of every dollar collected in federal excise taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel makes its way back into maintenance and expansion of the highway system, Bradley reminded officials. He urged the federal government to put a meaningful portion of the $6 billion it collects each year in excise taxes on fuel into a National Highway Trust Fund.

According to CTA, if the federal government doesn’t start earmarking federal excise taxes on fuel for highway/border funding, then those taxes should be repealed and harmonized with the GST. “Excise taxes are an old-fashioned way of taxing consumption that were introduced in the 1980s to fight the deficit. Now the government is generating surpluses and the taxes serve no policy purpose whatsoever,” said Bradley.

A long-term, funded strategy for border-crossing infrastructure is also needed, said Bradley. “Windsor — the world’s single most important gateway for land trade, between the world’s two largest trading partners — is the best imaginable example of where the combination of federal, provincial and municipal politics and the stifling strictures of the environmental assessment process, has stymied progress towards constructing a second crossing.”