Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his question. He is absolutely right.
The reaction of the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities on finding out that the deficit was $123 billion, was to say that it was not serious. Let us remember that. And yet, this is the first real, in-depth analysis the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has done. Every city was sent a questionnaire on their infrastructure needs. This is the first municipality by municipality analysis. The minister's first reaction was to say that it was not serious, when things have never been more serious.
The problem is that the government miscalculated things because it does not know the cities. Such is the cold hard reality. Perhaps also because this is not a federal jurisdiction. The federal government should have talked to the provinces in order to understand the situation before creating programs that it is now trying to defend in an effort to make political gains. The harsh reality is that a very large amount of money is needed, which the government did not foresee.
We have a problem right now. The government is being told to sit down and quickly create a program for negotiating a one time cash payment with each province so that each province can settle the infrastructure problems in each of its municipalities. The $123 billion figure suggests that we must address this today. We are beyond calculating the fuel tax, which represents $3.5 billion. As I mentioned earlier, this comes to $25.3 billion over seven years. This is completely disproportionate to the needs of the cities. When we talk about infrastructure, we are talking about public safety.
I have been saying this all along. History shows that the cities are having infrastructure problems today and are practically endangering the lives of their citizens because the federal government, in the 1990s, in trying to achieve a zero deficit, cut transfers to the provinces, which in turn had to cut transfers to the cities.