Mr. Speaker, while I listened with interest to my hon. colleague's speech, I was also present in the House when the government produced an economic update in November 2008 that projected a surplus for 2009 and completely failed to see coming what it now refers to as the “great recession” and had to be pressed into making investments to help save the Canadian economy by the New Democrats and this side of the House. It is interesting to hear this retelling of history.
I want to ask the member about the RInC program he is boasting about. The Conservative government created a program that would give money to municipalities of less than 100,000 in population to refurbish arenas and curling rinks. I tried to access those funds for my riding in Vancouver but was told we had to have a population of less than 100,000, which of course excluded all the major cities in this country. We also saw the Conservatives giving out big cheques with the Conservative logo on them, proving that they regarded this program as a way to shovel pork off the back of trucks. They could not understand the difference between the Conservative Party's and taxpayers' money.
What was the reason for having a 100,000 population limit on those funds? Why did the Conservatives not make those funds available to all communities in this country that needed help with their community centres, rinks and curling facilities and not just the ones in rural Canada? Why was that?