If I could be so bold, sir, as chair of the metro Vancouver board, we oversee about 2.5 million people in the lower mainland. As you can see from the map—and it goes only a little north of Pitt Meadows—this entire area is subject to flooding. As the silt continues to come down every year, you can appreciate that we have a diking system that is very formidable in this entire area. The diking system that was put in place with the help of the provincial government some 15 to 20 years ago with the Fraser River flood control program could be in jeopardy in some areas, because if you have a dike that is at this level and the bottom of the river used to be at this level and it continues to rise with the silt, at some point in time you can actually see the bottom of the river surpassing the height geodetically of your diking system. It is a very important point to be made, particularly when last year and the year before the mighty Fraser was very close to overspilling its banks, and that would be an absolute disaster for the entire lower mainland.
We believe in prevention, but as you know, local government only receives 8¢ of every tax dollar collected in this country. The federal government gets, I believe, 48¢ and the province gets 42¢. The local government cannot, nor can the metro government, take on the responsibility solely on the back of the property tax, where so many people, obviously, are looking after all of the functions, from policing, to engineering, to parks and recreation, and all of those facilities that are needed at the lower government.
So we are turning to the federal government in order to continue on with metro Vancouver's major problem in terms of the silting up. As you can see, the lines go right off the page. We're going right up, basically, to the town of Hope, through Kent and Harrison and so on. Chilliwack is another area very vulnerable to siltation.
I'm sorry I'm giving such a long answer, but it certainly is a question and a problem for the entire lower Fraser.