Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for appearing today.
I want to provide a bit of context on why we're here today. We're here because the government knew full well last election, when it was talking to Canadians, that it's difficult to get money out the door. That's why they promised to ensure that every year, before the fiscal year ends on March 31, they would transfer lapsed money, which is money unspent, into the gas tax transfer, immediately topping it up, so that municipalities would have immediate cash to meet their infrastructure priorities. However, they didn't fulfill that requirement and not only that, they are missing their commitments on infrastructure spending in a very big way. Before we go down the path of explaining that away and saying that it's being lapsed and re-profiled, it is clear that a dollar spent today in infrastructure is far more valuable than a dollar spent 10 years from now. This is just like a dollar of GDP growth today, which is far more important than a dollar spent 10 years from now...the wonders of compounding.
We're here because the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is an independent officer of Parliament, has pointed this out in numerous reports, most recently in the last week of March, saying that the government has drastically missed its infrastructure spending commitments. As a result, its own budget projections from previous budgets are way off the mark. Only 11,000 jobs have been created as a result of infrastructure spending and there has been one-tenth of 1% of GDP growth. In fact, by 2022, all that growth could be wiped out because of inflation and rising central bank rates. We're here to figure out why the government is not meeting its commitment to infrastructure spending and why it's not meeting its commitment to transfer money before fiscal year-end to top up the gas tax transfers.
This is not just an academic question. In its most recent review of commuting times, last November, StatsCan reported that commuting times are up in Canada and that the average commute has increased by 3%. Every day, some 16 million Canadians close their front doors and go to work, 12 million of whom are in our city regions, and their commutes are getting longer and longer and traffic is getting worse and worse. This is not just an academic question. There are real-life consequences on the ground. Billion of dollars in productivity are being lost in our large city regions. In the GTA today, the average commuting time is over an hour. It's not much of a problem for people living downtown. If you're living in Rosedale, the Annex, Cabbagetown, or Leaside, you can get downtown pretty quickly. However, if you're like the vast majority of the eight million or nine million residents in the GTA, you're spending hours in your car every day. It's really not just an academic question. It's a real challenge to understand what is going on and why the government is not fulfilling its commitments.
I would be interested to hear from you, Mr. Gamble, as to what is going on and what can be done about this. It's concerning. We're also not getting consistent plans from the government. Last month, they told the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who has the right to ask for this information on our behalf, that there were only roughly 10,000 projects to which federal money had been allocated. Last week, we were told that it's now 20,000 projects. Every three or four months, we seem to get a different plan for what is the government's largest decade-long commitment of some $180 billion. This is very concerning.
Mr. Gamble, could you comment on what you mention as the 15% shrinkage in your members' businesses over the last number of years? Could you talk about why the need is there now, rather than 10 years from now?