Certainly, the deficit is enormous and one that the municipalities cannot tackle alone. There's tens of billions of dollars staring down municipal budgets, and we need assistance, quite frankly, to make things happen. To give an example, we've had ICIP for the last number of years. That has been discussed today in a couple of different ways. Within that program, there's a component for community culture and recreation projects, again a bilateral between the federal government and the province. That total was I think around $400 million in Ontario between the two levels of government.
It was simply not enough. When that program came out, it was oversubscribed 10:1. That is indicative of some of the challenges we face with respect to infrastructure deficits. Most communities who applied got the rejection letter and were left wondering what to do now. My community was one of those. We were replacing 180 years of combined infrastructure with an arena and a library. I know that the merits of the project were as strong as they could be, yet we weren't able to access funding. I would put that squarely on the fact that there's just not enough money in the program.
The infrastructure deficit is enormous. It is something that municipalities need help with. Again, that level of flexibility to make investments in communities with targeted projects and targeted dollars is incredibly important, but the quantity of those dollars is certainly important as well.