It's a very good question. It's a very challenging question for some municipalities that perhaps have not been as diligent in past decades in terms of maintaining waste water management capability and capacity.
As I said in answer to one of your colleagues, in recent years we have invested more than $2 billion directly through the economic action plan to communities that applied for and received funding to improve and increase the capability and to add new levels of treatment. Every year we have made permanent the $2 billion gas tax rebate, which is intended for and can be applied entirely to infrastructure. That said, we also have the building Canada fund. As you know, and the Minister of Transport has addressed this in the House a number of times, we are considering renewal of that fund. When it comes to this sort of infrastructure funding, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is very forthright in their insistence on federal assistance. This will certainly be much easier once the deficit is eliminated and we can move forward and get back into a balanced budget situation.
That is our intent. We recognize that these costs are significant. There is a difference between the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' $20-plus billion cost and our estimate of somewhere between $5 billion and $10 billion. That said, we want to move forward and to assist communities large and small to ensure they treat their waste water appropriately.