Mr. Minister, there are 1,100 municipalities in Quebec. They are not all cities like Toronto. Most of them, at least 900, are small municipalities with less than 20,000 inhabitants. They do not all have the level of organization, administration and support you assume they do.
I know there are cities saying they will take any leftover money. That is fine. I know there are cities willing to take all the money in order to carry out work, but some municipalities will be penalized because they did not have enough time to review the files, prepare their budgets and submit their requests by January 31. You say it is easy, just a matter of filling out and submitting a form. It is not that easy. The council has to discuss it, budgets have to be prepared.
I know that as we speak, municipalities are in the midst of preparing their budgets; they will table them by December 15. There will be municipalities that choose not to make any requests because they do not have enough time to do it.