Well, Mr. Chair, there's a saying that I heard sometimes when I was growing up: you have to spend money to make money. Certainly, that's the case with infrastructure. When infrastructure investments are made, they act as a stimulus to the economy, which translates—when you create the wealth,through stimulating the economy through infrastructure—into having higher revenue in taxes. Therefore, you have more money to invest.
It's all about doing strategic investments and being careful, rather than saying “we're not going to spend any taxpayer money”. There's no strategy there at all: it's simply an empty political slogan to try to sell an ideology to voters.
The smart way to govern is to make strategic investments. It has been shown that the two railway lines we've been talking about today stimulate the economy, are vital to tourism in the area, and are vital to the health care services of the people who use those lines, at least in Gaspé.
I fail to see how investing in rail infrastructure is somehow throwing money into a hole. Through those investments, we will create wealth, which will return to the government and increase tax revenues for the government so that it can spend in other places, invest in the economy again, and make other strategic investments. It sounds to me like this government just wants to pull out of spending altogether and doesn't want to get involved in anything.