Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that.
You do great work at the CFIB. I've been a member for many years, and thank you for the surveys you send me.
I couldn't help but raise an eyebrow to what Mr. Brison said. Of course, I'm much older than he is and his snapshot of the crime rate going down is from the mid-seventies to a few years ago and doesn't include the 1950s and the 1960s. It doesn't deal with the issue of organized crime and how those rates, violent crimes, have doubled and tripled in some cases. Of course, we are in a different era today.
I wanted to talk to the FCM specifically in relation to the $123 billion infrastructure deficit. The economic action plan, the stimulus shot, the $45 billion--no more money in the history of Canada has ever been invested in real terms. In fact, some of the other changes, gas tax being permanent, $2 billion a year, the one-page application form for ease of application for the fastest and largest rollout in Canadian history, the extension of the deadline to October of this year from March.... Then, of course, there's the equal distribution across the country, which I've heard from people, and I haven't seen any empirical evidence to suggest any favouritism was played in any part of the country.
My interest is strictly this. Of course, the NDP voted against all those things in the budget and in the subsequent budget. What would have happened to your members in particular if the $45 billion in stimulus...based upon some of the information I have, it is going to continue for some 30 or 40 years, including some of the green infrastructure investments, the northwest transmission line in British Columbia and the Mayo B in Yukon, and those types of investments that are going to continue to bring investment. What would have happened if the $45 billion was not invested by this government and the NDP had been successful in their vote against it?