Our goal, obviously, was to meet the three objectives of the fund. In addition, obviously as part of the global economic downturn we responded with the stimulus initiative, and some 23,000 projects, Government of Canada wide, were taken. We did a significant amount of work to ensure that things would move expeditiously, quickly.
In fact, we were dealing with mostly municipal projects here. The Canadian association of municipalities I think has acknowledged and even given an award to the department for the great job they did in moving expeditiously.
There was a lot of debate whether the federal government could respond to the challenge. We did that. I think by and large the infrastructure funds, when you look at the totality, were distributed pretty fairly. If you look at the work we did from coast to coast to coast, it created a lot of jobs. We have a lot of public infrastructure that will benefit communities for many years to come.
We did move quickly. Things were far too slow in the past. I thought they were too slow. Opposition members, provinces, municipalities, government members all thought they were too slow. We did a lot to speed that up.
I think if you look at the record in its totality, it was an unprecedented success. I think one of the things that was so good was that we put aside partisan politics, worked with municipalities of every political stripe, worked with provincial governments of every political stripe.
I think that's exactly...not what people expected during the economic downturn, but they demanded it, and I think they received it.