The current issue of Momentum Magazine of Vancouver (also distributed in Toronto) features the petition that one Chris Tomasini got rolling to ask parliament for a tax credit on bikes. MP Olivia Chow of Trinity-Spadina in Toronto (and also a bike commuter to her work on the Hill as well as in Toronto) presented the petition to the Conservative government (who is better known for their dubious tax credits on gas/ethanol guzzling behemoths as an environmental "solution"). Needless to say Chris is a bit realistic of his chances with this government:
"One single petition which isn’t followed up by others is probably useless. If you go into the House of Commons debates page and type in ‘cycling’ you’ll get a couple of hits I think. But if you type in ‘gay marriage’ you’ll get hundreds of hits from all these very conservative people asking the government to outlaw gay marriage again.
“So to begin with you need petition after petition. To be really effective, cyclists probably need to operate like the agribusiness and pharmaceutical conglomerates and pay millions of dollars to lobby groups to actually grease the palms of the party insiders who dream up public policy. I think the backrooms are where action takes place, not on the floor of the House."
But Chris sees some benefit to the petition in raising public awareness and pushing towards a larger campaign for cycling in Canada:
“I was glad to get that petition done and read, and it was worthwhile to do. But to actually cause change, there needs to be some sort of campaign. One person writing a letter to his or her MP or MPP is great, but that person working with a group to gets hundreds of people to write these letters is better.”
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