Thank you, Madam Chair.
The key message is that in spite of the fact that this is a short-term economic stimulus plan, efforts to rehabilitate infrastructure have to continue on a 15 year horizon. Unfortunately, I can't give you the information you want. I told Ms. Bourgeois that once the November 1 municipal elections in Quebec are over, we will be able to consult our members.
The Union had been calling for infrastructure programs for a long time, and we are pleased with it.
I'd like to remind everybody around this table of what we are talking about from a strategic point of view, and we've discussed this with our friends at the FCM and FQM. Forty-six percent of all the federal, provincial, and municipal revenues go to the federal government. Forty-six percent goes--tax, income tax--to the provinces and 8% comes to the municipalities. With that 8% we're supposed to do everything that we're being asked to do, plus there's downloading from our respective governments. We have been asking for a long-term view of structural adjustments on what we consider our key elements, such as infrastructure programs.
Work on infrastructure in Quebec has increased visibly, but nothing is perfect, it will take time. There have been examples in Quebec where programs were considered to be ending on a certain date. Extensions were given because of various things that happened.
All kinds of things happen. I'm doing a structural project right now in one of our villages. We dug to see if there were rocks. We dug in five places, but in between the places where we dug we found rock. This threw the project into an uproar because we had to come back and deal with the rock differently. There are all kinds of reasons why projects are not going as fast as possible. That's reality. We live in an imperfect world.
In conclusion, the UMQ would like to see both higher levels of government coordinate their priorities better so the programs will be better tailored to the situation in Quebec.
Thank you.