Thank you for joining us. I really appreciate it.
Mr. Zurel, you made the comment about high benefits, high pay, and the competition. There's another side to that coin: when government services are provided in a community, those incomes are invested in your community.
The unemployment rate is 7.3% currently. When you add in those who have given up looking for employment, it is 11%. I'm not sure about Newfoundland; for a long time, it was even worse than the rest of Canada.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities says there's a deficit of over $130 billion in infrastructure in our country. From your presentation, I gather that you look for strategic investment from the federal government. The government set a narrow timeframe to reduce the deficit. We're suggesting that they should extend that out and invest in infrastructure, undertaking that deficit of $130 billion, in order to employ Canadians right now. What would you think of that?