Thank you.
Mr. Kelly, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Construction Association, the Canada West Foundation, the Toronto Region Board of Trade, the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance have all said that they are very worried about the $171-billion infrastructure deficit that the municipalities are facing. They have all, each one of them, called on the federal government to play a bigger role so that there would be long-term predictable funding. That seems to be quite contrary to what you're pushing for.
Having said that, it sounds like there is common ground between you and me. Your presentation, which I really appreciate, said two key things, that government regulations and paper burden are a big problem, at 67%. I totally agree.
President Obama has introduced a streamlining of the approval process to cut the red tape. They were able to cut their approval process on their infrastructure funds by 50%, so it's much, much faster. Their way of doing it is that once they approve the project, they put the money up front, you go with it—of course there are legal agreements—and then it's done. They monitor it and evaluate it.
The Canadian style is that we approve the project, sign all the legal agreements, you do the spending, and then every time you have a receipt, you go back and forth, and the Canadian government approves the receipts and then sends out the money.
What is it that you support, the American style or the Canadian style? How do you think the Canadian government—never mind all the other levels of government, because we're talking about the federal government here—could cut red tape and streamline the approval process? That's question one.
Two, I noticed that in response to the question of why they don't sell to the federal government, 21% said there was too much paperwork; 24.5% said there was no means of determining what the government wants; and 26.5% said that the government's tendering and bidding process was too complicate”. All of the top tier in terms of the complaints, it seems to me, goes to the question of red tape.
What could we do in a concrete way to streamline the process, make it a lot easier for the municipalities or the people doing business with the federal government, and save everybody some money?