Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown is fond of saying “there’s no monopoly on a good idea.” It remains to be seen if the Liberal government feels the same way about a Tory-led private member's bill that would promote the purchase of natural-gas-fuelled vehicles.

PC MPP Bob Bailey’s Natural Gas Superhighway Act, otherwise known as Bill 76, is currently being considered by the Standing Committee on the Legislative Assembly after passing Second Reading last March.

The legislation is a two-pronged attempt to encourage the purchase of more natural-gas-fuelled vehicles via new vehicle weight-limit regulations (to accommodate heavier fuel tanks) and a tax credit.

For the latter, the bill would amend the Taxation Act to establish a non-refundable tax credit for purchasers of certain natural-gas vehicles. The tax credit would be worth half of the provincial portion of the HST the buyer paid for the vehicle, which requires the support of the federal government to implement.

“As a transportation fuel, natural gas (including both compressed natural gas and liquefied natural gas) represents a cleaner and lower-cost alternative to traditional fuels and a viable solution to increased consumer costs,” states the preamble to the bill.

Bill 76 would also need the Liberal government to vote for it in order to pass. Fortunately, the government’s climate-change agenda involves the transportation sector, which accounted for 35 per cent of the province’s greenhouse gases in 2013 — the largest single source of such emissions in Ontario that year.

The government’s climate-change strategy put low- and zero-emission vehicles among its top priorities, such as electric cars, while also allowing for some shorter-term solutions, natural gas presumably among them.

“Low-carbon fuels will also allow modes of transportation like long- and heavy-haul trucking and marine transport that are not easily electrified to be part of Ontario's sustainable transportation future,” states the strategy.

Bailey's bill (which died on the order paper in the last parliament) notes that Quebec offers "fiscal incentives" to try to get fleets to buy natural gas vehicles. Ontario, meanwhile, won't provide a transition period for fossil fuels under its cap-and-trade system.

Bill 76 hasn't been voted down yet, and the legislative assembly committee heard from witnesses twice this month.

“Natural gas is a cleaner and more practical choice for fleet vehicles and heavier-duty trucks than diesel, and provides positive returns on conversion costs when we compare those costs per tonne of avoided CO2,” said Dr. Philip Walsh during a March 9 committee meeting. Walsh is the chair of the department of entrepreneurship and strategy at Ryerson University's Ted Rogers School of Management.

“Bill 76 is a reasonable step forward — and I use the term ‘reasonable’ — in helping incent the switch to a cleaner fuel for medium- to heavier-load vehicles,” added Walsh, who is also a researcher at Ryerson's Centre for Urban Energy.

Dave Simpson, vice-president for sales, marketing and customer care with Union Gas, said the natural gas distributor strongly supports the bill — but also sees it as a first step to bigger things. Union Gas serves approximately 1.4 million customers in the province and sports one of the largest underground storage facilities in North America with its Dawn Hub.

“The transport sector is the largest contributor of greenhouse gases, and the long-haul heavy-duty portion of that sector is the most significant and fastest-growing sector,” Simpson told the committee. “So it is the exact sweet spot where we should be going, with available technology today, to see results today.”

Yousef El Bagoury, a superintendent at Canada Steamship Lines, a longstanding shipping company, said that switching to natural gas “has got to be more incentivized, as opposed to being forced upon us.”

Cutting emissions from the transportation sector is on Ottawa’s radar as well. The 2016 federal budget earmarked $56.9 million over two years to “support the transition to a cleaner transportation sector, including through the development of regulations and standards for clean transportation technology.”

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Twitter: @geoffzochodne

Will the government take an exit ramp on ‘Natural Gas Superhighway’ bill?

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