Being shovel ready means things like preliminary engineering have been done so that they're actually ready to put the money to work. Perhaps it's a capacity issue in many municipalities, that they simply don't have that kind of capability just sitting there waiting for a government program to come along. You also mentioned labour shortages, and again, with record-low unemployment, that has to be a factor as well.
This leads to a couple of thoughts, which may take us beyond where your focus was. Should we, for instance, as a government, look at increasing the percentage of the total project costs that our contribution can cover, expanding what's allowable, or, for the longer term, should we start looking at complementary improvements to the municipal ability to raise money so that they in fact are ready to take advantage of programs like this when they come along?