Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your presentations.
My first question is for you, Mr. Tapp. The issue of shovel-worthy versus shovel-ready has me somewhat concerned, given my municipal background. I did financing budgets for my region, which had an annual operating budget of about $1 billion. It's not the largest, but it's certainly not insignificant.
For municipalities, the true meaning of shovel-ready is that it's ready to go to tender. I think we all agree that on infrastructure funding and building smart infrastructure, long-term investment is a great thing. But if a municipality has to spend $200,000 to $1 million on environmental assessments, design, and engineering for a bridge only to then have that project sit on a shelf if they don't get the funding, what municipal councillor is going to make that investment for a project that never sees the light of day?
Part of the problem with the former government's infrastructure investment was that you actually couldn't use any of that funding on making a project shovel-ready, so you were filling potholes or doing sidewalk repairs or a park repair because you could do the engineering and the studies in-house.
To your point about managing expectations in the first year, wouldn't it actually be opening up the investment for these big transit projects, rail projects, or whatever the case may be to get those engineering drawings and the environmental assessments and all of that and to actually make a project shovel-ready? Wouldn't that be a better investment in, say, year one?