One of the real challenges we have in rural communities is a capacity issue. We've shared with Minister Cannon some of the concerns we have, for example with tripartite funding programs into which the federal government puts in a third, the province puts in a third, and we put in a third.
One of the challenges we have with this is that once you make an application and you get the grant.... You make the application, and then the navigable waters people come and assess it, and it takes a little bit of time to do that. Once they've completed their assessment, it goes to the environment department for their assessment, and that takes another period of time. We also end up dealing with provincial regulations, and their departments of environment and transportation become involved. In some cases, we've gone a year to two years past the original approval date of the grant. Now the cost has changed significantly, particularly in Alberta right now, and you could double or triple those costs. In some cases it has added an additional $500,000, which for a small municipality is a fairly significant cost. We have some examples of those kinds of things in the case of bridgeworks.
One of the challenges we have in the irrigation area is that irrigation canals, under the definition, are navigable waters, but the legislation under which irrigation districts operate does not allow any kind of vessel traffic on those waters. So they're not navigable by the local definition, but by the federal definition they are. So there is a conflict there.
We have significant bridgeworks. For example, in Alberta we have 10,000 bridges. The rural municipalities I represent have responsibility for 97% of those bridges. There are 9,700 bridges. Many of them are the irrigation district bridges, and it really ties up our timeframe and adds significant cost to it. At the end of the day, if you look at what's happening with provincial auditors general as well as the federal Auditor General, there is a lot of discussion about value for money. Are we truly getting good value for that money when we're adding significant costs with these kinds of delays?
If we could retool the definition, I think it would probably eliminate a lot of the applications and, if we had more local responsibility for that, the necessity of coming forward.
Does that help?
Dave, I don't know if you want to add anything.