We believe here that there are quarters of government that have equal value and there is no senior or junior. If we want to be in partnership, we have to listen to you, and our action should reflect that.
It was suggested last week by the Quebec municipalities' association that if we didn't have that flexibility, it wouldn't really be treating municipalities fairly. In other words, there were delays on the federal end and there may have been some on the provincial end. You mentioned the election. But it wouldn't be fair that the only governments that paid for delays were the municipal ones.
I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but is there something constructive in terms of...? This is the only committee that looks at the infrastructure part and a big part of the municipal partnership. Shouldn't we have some ground rules like this? Shouldn't we be encouraging this to be part of every federal-provincial arrangement? When the municipalities say something like “flexibility” and “still prepared to work very hard for it”, shouldn't that be built in? Maybe that's something we should do in the future to make sure a partnership is really based on those kinds of principles.