Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, distinguished guests, for being with us this afternoon. The clarifications you have made are very useful. However, I always have a lot of trouble deciding between the pros and the cons. And so I would like to go back to basics and ask you a two-part question.
Mr. Stoney, in the definition you gave at the beginning of your statement, you excluded investments in cultural infrastructure programs, even though municipalities are clamouring for them. Do you think it would be a winning solution to finance a certain category of infrastructure projects through public-private partnerships, and another through public investments?
If that is the case, will the situation be the same if we are talking about a large city such as Montreal, or other, smaller municipalities? I am raising the question because terms are being used here as though they were a given, whereas the population of municipalities in Canada ranges between 300 inhabitants and 3 million.