Thank you, Madam Chair.
And thank you to our witnesses today for being here. This is a very interesting conversation we're having.
When I think about the stimulus program and what it was meant to accomplish--to deal with the aging infrastructure in the country and to create badly needed jobs at the same time--I'm always a little nervous about this two-year deadline, because if you're talking about building anything of any significant size.... Having been a minister of education and having built schools in our province, I know it's very difficult to get something built within two years. So it's always been an issue for me that you set a deadline of that timeframe.
I represent a riding in Newfoundland and Labrador. I have 180 communities in my riding alone, and 35 of those communities actually received letters of intent, and in some cases the money is actually flowing. But when I think about Newfoundland and Labrador.... We all know there's going to be a shorter construction season in some parts of the country than in others. I'm not sure if that was ever factored into what governed this particular program and how it was put together.
My concern is that if you start something like an arena or a stadium or whatever, and you're doing it through the use of stimulus money and it's not completed by the end of the deadline, the municipality then has to assume responsibility for it. I can tell you from my perspective that there are going to be a lot of boondoggles throughout the country. I know in my riding you're going to have buildings that are partially constructed that aren't going to go any further than that, because in the communities I know of where they've received funding, they just will not have the money to complete them.
The point I'm raising in all of this is to say to you, as organizations representing municipalities throughout the country, that it's incumbent on you to be more aggressive in making the point to the government that this arbitrary deadline has to go by the wayside. Otherwise, it's going to be a waste of taxpayers' money if we have construction that doesn't get completed, because, as in my case, municipalities of 1,000 people won't be able to complete the initiatives they started.
Where are you in your approach with the government on this? You obviously recognize that there's a problem here. I put this to Mr. Cunningham, and to Mr. Généreux as well.