Transport committee  So in the gas tax fund, as you know, municipalities--

Transport committee  Right, but Building Canada has two components.

Transport committee  Under the major infrastructure component of Building Canada, which I think is what you're talking about--

Transport committee  --we negotiate with provinces and municipalities. So every province has a specified allocation and we negotiate with provinces, mostly, for what we're going to do.

Transport committee  Municipalities are often at the table, but the allocation goes first to the province. Then the priorities are discussed within that.

Transport committee  Generally speaking, the ones that get funded the soonest are the ones that are most ready to be funded. We get projects that come to us in different stages. Some of them are complete. They've done their engineering. They've lined up their financing. They've done their environment

Transport committee  How about I speak a little more generally?

Transport committee  Safety and security are very important, and we have some special rules on safety and security. In the provincial-territorial base fund, for example, we will allow a municipality to apply directly for urgent safety and security issues, even if they're not capital. With respect t

Transport committee  As an official, I don't have a view per se--

Transport committee  --but what I can tell you is that the way the government delivers the funds now, they tend to be omnibus in nature. Municipalities are able to apply for a multiplicity of things within that fund, including transit. Transit has historically been either one or two on our list of mo

Transport committee  With most municipalities, it depends on the program.

Transport committee  Yes: under the communities component of Building Canada, municipalities are limited to applying for one project per round. Again, that's an instance where municipalities give us their number one priority.

Transport committee  Essentially, I think the primary reason that the federal government has historically avoided operation costs is twofold. First, it introduces a level of discipline into the system. If you are going to be responsible, after the project is built, for the operation and maintenance

Transport committee  Correct. We also don't want to see a situation where municipalities are failing to maintain their assets in the hope of getting a portion of that maintenance covered by some future program. We want infrastructure that's really commensurate with the size of the community and we wa

Transport committee  Yes: again, it's easier to be able to apply for something from the community up towards the federal government than it is for the federal government to be dictating the criteria down. In a country that's as vast as Canada, with as many different regions and with the sizes of our