Thank you, and thank you for your warm comments at the outset. I also want to extend to you best wishes on your new role as spokesperson for your party.
Without disputing the $22 billion amount—you might be right, but I haven't seen that sum of money—what I am told is that over the last year to year and a half, officials from the transport portfolio part of the department were in touch with their provincial counterparts and the previous minister's counterparts. At that point, we were able, as the Government of Canada, to establish a comprehensive network and a plan and approach to identify what actually is the national highway system—its core essence—and also identify a number of feeder routes.
Over the next couple of months, and particularly culminating in September, my plan will be to be in Charlottetown with my counterparts, so that together we can establish the priorities regarding where we spend this money that has been awarded and allotted through the budget, and how we go about strengthening our highway system.
This having been said, clearly my intention following that meeting is to get back to cabinet as fast as possible and determine the criteria by which these amounts of money will be spent and the projects that will be identified as going with them.
I do not expect that there will be large variations from the past experience, although one of the elements or components certainly might be to look at more environmentally friendly and sustainable ways of doing things with our counterparts in the provinces, territories, and borders.