I think this point is primarily related to funding. We know that municipal governments have the smallest amount of incoming revenue. We know that the federal government has much larger pools of money.
We know that the federal government provides money for capital costs. This poses a real challenge when we understand that infrastructure really has these large upfront costs, but also has these very significant ongoing operation and maintenance costs. It's problematic if money is being spent to build these projects without necessarily having the revenue streams, the opportunities, to be able to keep them up and running and in a state of good repair.
We've seen across the country incidents where our infrastructure does run into serious problems in terms of its condition. We've had bridges collapse. Just recently here in Toronto, we had facades falling off social housing buildings. These are really major infrastructure deficits, and there are huge maintenance backlogs well beyond the capacity of local governments and municipalities to pay for in regard to these assets.
I think it behooves the federal government, when thinking about where to best spend money and when we have a $54-billion or $55-billion infrastructure plan coming over the next decade, to think not only about building new stuff, stuff where you can cut nice ribbons and gain political credit—I think that's good—but also about how we're going to operate and maintain what we already have, because that has value. It creates jobs as well and it ensures that these things can encourage our productivity.