Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the witnesses. It's very good to have you here. As a former director with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, I always enjoy having an opportunity to speak with you, or attend your conferences, or do anything with you, because I think you do a fantastic job of representing the communities. But you're here today to try to soften the government on the deadline they have for the completion of these projects, which were set up really as a national priority to deal with an economic downturn.
So this project is a national priority project, which the federal government opened up to communities in order to accomplish national goals. The national goals were to stimulate the economy and to avoid a deep recession. That was the purpose of this project. Had we been stimulating infrastructure projects in communities simply to improve infrastructure, we probably wouldn't have put a deadline on them. That wouldn't have happened, and it would have been done in a more comprehensive fashion, rather than having it on a project-by-project basis. Money would probably have been allocated on a more global basis to all the communities so that they could participate in developing their infrastructure, whichever community has infrastructure needs. I don't think there's one in the country that doesn't.
So that's the situation. Government doesn't want to change the deadline because idealistically they feel this would compromise other communities that didn't try to participate because they couldn't meet the deadlines. The government has that idealistic issue in its head, so it doesn't want to change the deadline. I don't think it's because they want to punish communities. I reject that. I don't think that's really what this government is trying to do here, and what we need to do is convince them that this is not an idealistic issue; it's just a practical issue right now, and other communities will not be put out if the government changes the deadline.
I just want to get your comments on that, both the B.C. Federation of Municipalities and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. How do you think the other communities that didn't participate in the program would feel if the deadline was extended for these communities that have had trouble meeting the deadline? I think that's the nub of what the government has been talking about in the last while.