Mr. Chair, a lot of things in that question are very disparate.
In another life, I was a mayor, a member of the Union des municipalités du Québec, in the group of mayors that put pressure on the previous government. One measure was put in place by our government so that the municipalities had permanent funding. It became the gasoline excise tax refund, which we set in legislation. It's now permanent funding. However, certain parties voted against all that funding.
All the small municipalities in Canada now have predictable funding. So they can do long-term planning and use that money to meet all their needs. It isn't up to the federal government to decide how they use that money. To my knowledge, the municipality can still today, in 2012, decide to invest the funding where it wants to.