Certainly I think, as you're aware, the gas tax fund was a program started under the previous government around the 2005 period, and was continued with significant investments from your government over the past decade. In our own municipality, we've seen that amount that we receive annually. We're in a two-tier structure here in the Kitchener and Waterloo region, where certain responsibilities lie with the lower tier municipalities and certain ones with the region. In our case, in the early years of that program, we went from where we were receiving essentially several hundred thousand dollars a year, to now receiving over $6 million annually, and as you know, that amount is now indexed as a result of the work between the federal government and the FCM to see those kinds of enhancements.
More recently, the commitment to investment that occurred in the budget in terms of a national transit infrastructure strategy has certainly been beneficial to the municipal sector. It's something we were looking for and have asked about. Certainly some questions still need to be resolved: Who's eligible? What's the federal share going to be? How do P3s factor into this?
I would encourage as much dialogue as possible with the FCM to resolve those issues. Ultimately, if this program is only available to the few, the very largest municipalities, it probably won't achieve the ultimate benefit it could if it's a little broader in scope.