Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I must admit I have the opposite problem to the one you're presenting to us this morning. Ultimately, you're making every effort to speed up the work. You're making every effort so that the funding is injected extremely quickly. I don't have any problem in that regard, except that Quebec launched its own roughly $30 billion infrastructure renovation program last year.
I'm going to tell you something. In my riding, there was a municipality that had a roughly $2.3 million or $2.4 million infrastructure project. However, after two requests for proposals, no engineering firm responded. I'll explain to you why.
Currently, with all the infrastructure programs introduced by the Quebec and federal governments, most engineering and architectural firms in our region, and even outside our region—because the request for proposals was issued in the Quebec City region and even in the Montreal region—are extremely busy.
So the problem we'll have at some point, according to what the municipalities tell me, is that this could considerably increase infrastructure costs and make it so that we won't even be able to carry out the projects. Since the engineering and architectural firms are overwhelmed with work, they'll choose the biggest jobs and will obviously try to get the biggest contracts. They won't even take the trouble to bid for work on a $2.8 million contract.
There's also another phenomenon in the construction sector in Quebec right now: we're eventually going to be short of labour. We're already short of it. So if we start out more major infrastructure works, contractors won't even have the trained and skilled labour to do the work.
What could happen is that the work will be significantly delayed because, if we put a lot of money into infrastructure, people who lose their jobs won't necessarily be able to work in the construction sector. That's currently the problem in my region.
I'll give you an example. In the Matane area alone, in my riding, they apparently need 98 welders. They can't find them. If infrastructure programs are launched and steel is used for bridges, we don't even have welders. Have you assessed the impact that can have on increased works costs?