Thank you, all, for coming here today. It's good to hear these stories.
I wanted to start with Ms. Holmes and Ms. Bohaichuk. Talking about infrastructure, especially in small rural municipalities, I think my riding has 41 communities in it, and 15 are big enough to have a mayor and a council. When we were talking about the infrastructure program of the government, I got in touch with every one of them and talked to them, plus all the rural regional district representatives. I said, “What are your needs?” Their resounding message was, “Don't forget rural Canada.” They feel that they have trouble competing against big cities for this funding. They don't have the capacity to fill out all the forms and do all the grant applications, and they just want it to work better for rural municipalities. I think you touched on some of these things.
I just wanted to know if you could expand a bit on the gas tax model. I didn't really catch.... I don't come from a municipal background. What I've been hearing from some of my mayors is that they know their asset management needs. They know how much money they are going to have to spend every year from now until the end of the century. Why can't we have longer-term grants from higher levels of government so that they don't have to fill out the forms every year? I wonder if you can expand on any of that and help me out. Thanks.