I believe that the municipalities are in the best possible position to know their own environment. I believe that the federal government needs to trust elected municipal officials. We were elected democratically, just as you were. We too make commitments to our residents.
I'm going to give you a very concrete example of how things are done in the municipalities. The example I'm going to give you has made the national news. A developer bought some land to build some high-density housing. Unfortunately for that developer, I had made a commitment to set aside this land for commercial use. I was elected with 83% of the votes, and so believe my mandate was pretty clear in my community. Now, the developer is unhappy because he wants to build what are called affordable housing units.
Situations like that sometimes come up. Nevertheless, no one is in a better position than the mayor and the municipal council to know how things work in their community.