Thank you to our witnesses for their testimony.
I just want to bring it back to why we're here today. The PBO has issued a number of reports now, critical of the government's infrastructure plan or lack thereof. The PBO is critical of the fact that the government's infrastructure is not producing the economic growth and job creation that was promised. It's critical of the fact that the government has allowed a significant amount of funds to lapse and re-profiled them for years to come.
I want to bring it back to the reality on the ground for the constituents who I represent in southern Ontario and people across the country who are frustrated with an underinvestment in infrastructure in this country. StatsCan tells us that every day in this country 16 million people leave their house to commute—16 million Canadians each and every day—12 million of them living in our city regions. They also reported in their most recent report that commuting times are increasing. They increased 3% in the five-year period for which they were reporting last November, a 3% increase in commuting times. In the Toronto region alone, commuting times are now over one hour only surpassed by those living in New York city, where household incomes are double what they are in the GTA, and people are getting frustrated.
Governments keep talking about making these investments, but the reality on the ground is that commuting is getting longer and longer, traffic is getting worse and worse, and they are not seeing the results. If the average commute time in the Toronto census metropolitan area, as reported by Statistics Canada, is over an hour, you can rest assured that for many people it's well into the hour-and-a-half to two-hour time frame. This is negatively affecting the day-to-day quality of people's lives and it's affecting our ability to grow the economy and to produce the prosperity that we all want. I'm just speaking for those people today. It's the thing I hear most consistently, that people are getting frustrated, stuck in traffic. One truck overturns on the 401 and you have a backup that lasts for an entire day. You have backup for tens of miles going on. It's getting so bad that police forces are resorting to drones to try to figure out where the traffic accidents are, to try to alleviate the blockages. It's not getting better; it's getting worse. We as a committee are trying to figure out where the problems are in the government's infrastructure programs and make recommendations to unglue these programs, so that we can get the funds flowing more quickly and address this real quality of life issue for Canadians.