It's rather interesting. As I heard testimony from both ministers with respect to what obviously was a very busy agenda, and then the question about how you help support infrastructure requirements in municipalities, I thought about that at length. You may not know, but I come from London, Ontario, the 10th largest city in the country. I share that with you because when the government made the decision to implement the gas tax, and then doubled it and made it permanent, my city was the beneficiary of some $21 million—modest compared to some of those great cities such as Toronto and Montreal, but very significant to us.
One of the things I do is a weekly survey of my constituents and others. It goes out to about 25,000 people, and it's a rather interesting thing. One of the questions I asked about the gas tax was on the priorities of the municipalities, because they have a fair amount of flexibility to do things with the gas tax. I asked whether the dollars should be spent on major projects or on small sewer/gutter kinds of things, and overwhelmingly they came back with the strong belief that it should be major projects.
I look at the $21 million my municipality receives. If they had a $100 million project, which is not insignificant...I would think that if you've got five years of permanent funding, that gives you the avenue or the opportunity to be able to take care of what you need for a project, if you focused on large projects.
Is there any intention to be more restrictive with municipalities about the gas tax? Is that pretty much set, would you imagine, or will they have the flexibility that they seem to have shown in the past? Can anyone here enlighten me? I'm not sure who to ask in this august group.