I recognize the fact that transfers to the provinces were cut post-1993. As a result, most of the provinces had to reduce transfers to municipalities and most municipalities had to raise property taxes. The deficit that caused the reduction in transfer programs post-1993 has been eliminated, but municipalities across the nation are concerned that the federal government and the provincial governments are talking about cutting taxes, having eliminated their deficits, while we're left still paying higher property taxes that originated from that post-1993 reduction.
On municipal-rural infrastructure funding--COMRIF here in Ontario--it has certainly helped to meet the needs of municipalities in a number of communities. But of all the applications that have been submitted for funding through COMRIF, only one-third have been approved. So for every winner we've had through COMRIF in the first two phases, we've had two losers. We know there's a smaller allocation of funding to be made in the third round than was allocated in the first two, so I don't hold out any hope at all that the needs of municipalities, as expressed by those applications, are going to be met.
We have concerns about the kind of program COMRIF is. It's application-based and project-based. Many municipalities have to hire consulting engineers to prepare the applications for COMRIF, and that costs a lot of money. Those applications are submitted to the COMRIF bureaucracy, which costs both senior orders of government a lot of money.
So when we look at the way that program is structured, consider that it has more losers than winners and is very expensive to apply for and implement, and compare it to the federal gas tax program, which is basically an entitlement program administered directly by AMO for the federal government, we think entitlement programs are a much better way to go.