Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
My first question is for Mr. Louie. It's probably no surprise; I was on council for 10 years in my region, so this is what the witness has been looking for.
One of the biggest reasons that I ran, in fact, was a frustration not necessarily with the funding but with how funding flows to municipalities. During my pre-budget consultations, I met with chairman Roger Anderson who I know is on the executive, so I'm sure you know him well. One of the biggest issues is how funding flows. Over the last couple of days we've heard from witnesses who talked about shovel-worthy projects. My frustration has been that I know from municipalities that we could have these more visionary projects ready, but it's the cost to get them ready for tender that usually makes them ineligible for the former funding model.
Could you speak to that? Does FCM have a position in terms of their preferred flow of this infrastructure money? What is it that municipalities would prefer to ensure that we can actually have shovel-ready projects that are the more visionary ones, such as transit and climate change-type infrastructure, ready to go?