Thank you, Minister.
Twenty years ago, there was no federal funding whatsoever for municipal infrastructure. Municipalities funded their infrastructure largely by themselves, with some limited assistance from the provinces, but the federal government had no role at that time. Since 1992, there has been a windfall of money to our municipalities. In the last decade, it has been a spectacular windfall.
I have here the stats from Statistics Canada. In 2001, the municipalities had about $87.4 billion in revenue. In 2011 they had $149.2 billion in revenue. That's data for local governments found at Stats Canada. That is a 70% increase in 10 years. During the same time, we have had only a 30% increase of combined population growth and inflation. In other words, revenues have been growing more than twice as fast as have the costs and the population.
Do you agree that municipalities are now better funded than ever before?