Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I kind of agree with Mr. Guimond about the behaviour on the government side, but I won't focus on that.
It's rare that the government does almost precisely what the opposition tells them to do. It will be entertaining to reread the arguments of the Conservative members from the last meeting or two as to why this was such a terrible idea.
But it's not costless, the fact that they delayed, because we proposed this--which is precisely what they've done, apart from one month--in mid-September, so as a consequence of delaying it until now, which is more than a month and a half, municipalities have had to spend unnecessarily on overtime because they were rushing to this arbitrary deadline. They were working around the clock in some cases. Because of this deadline, they had to bid for materials, pushing up prices.
The government has totally flip-flopped and has totally come around to our position. I guess I could say better late than never, but as a consequence of that delay, they have imposed unnecessary costs on municipalities and created unnecessary uncertainty for a longer period of time.
That's it.
I think Mr. Dhaliwal wants to speak.