Those two pieces open the door for important discussion: first of all, making recreation facilities an eligible category of Building Canada infrastructure dollars; and second, having a modest investment through this budget in a dedicated fund for sport and recreation infrastructure.
I am on a crusade for using sport and recreation to achieve broader goals, and one of those, the big one, is health. We know that the health of our country is directly related to the levels of physical activity and sport participation. In 2002, the Romanow report said if you spend $1 on sport, you save $5 on health. You don't have to like sport. That's pretty good math.
If you go to Attawapiskat and you ask the youth there what they need and what they want in their community, the first thing they write on the list is a recreation centre. They need a place to gather, a place to play. I spent a lot of time with my cabinet colleagues suggesting how they can achieve their objectives through sport and recreation or a sport-and-recreation angle or lens. I would say that recreation infrastructure is an absolutely huge piece of that, and that's why it's in my mandate letter to work on improving the state of our recreation infrastructure across this country.