Thanks for the question, Ms. O'Connell.
In our brief, we point out a number of areas of rural infrastructure that we should be looking at, not just roads and bridges but things like rail infrastructure. For our sector, border infrastructure is a big one. Live cattle move back and forth across the Canada-U.S. border. Last year, over a million head went back and forth over that border. Inspection facilities at those border crossings are deteriorating, so looking at investments there would be helpful as well. There's also telecommunications and things like community infrastructure for these small rural communities that need to attract a workforce, and sometimes the communities don't have those amenities that people are looking for. When we're talking infrastructure, we are talking about a wide range of possible investment.
That said, in our discussions with our members what emerged from what cattle feeders are telling us is that, as important as all of those are, investments there won't mean a lot ultimately if we don't have the road and bridge infrastructure to maximize agriculture's contribution. That is of primary importance. I didn't have enough time in the presentation to talk about those other investments, so I wanted to basically focus on what we would consider to be the urgent need, which is roads and bridges.
I'll make just one final point. With respect to counties like Lethbridge, this county has a very small property tax base. There are very few residents, very few homes. There's very little linear tax in the form of utility corridors, oil and gas, but what they do have is a lot of farmland, and farmland is typically taxed differently from other classes of property.
On the flip side of the low tax base, what you have are huge infrastructure needs, a lot of that driven by irrigation. There are miles and miles of irrigation canals in that county and they need bridges over those canals to move that product. We're looking in that particular case at a county with a poor tax base and with a very high expenditure obligation in the context of a provincially, regionally, and nationally important agricultural zone.
I apologize if there was any confusion. I just wanted to really strike to the important heart of the matter on this one.