You are quite right. We even forget how Quebec was built.
Quebec has 1,108 municipalities. We can talk about large and small municipalities, but we forget that barely 100 municipalities have more than 20,000 inhabitants. Only 10 municipalities have more than 100,000 inhabitants.
My municipality, Sainte-Catherine-de-Hatley, has 2,600 inhabitants. Our budget is about $3.5 million. It has just passed the $3 million mark. Now, municipalities are being asked if they can afford to invest $20 million. My municipality is in the top third of municipalities in Quebec. This shows how unreasonable the requested investment is.
The federal government has just changed its definition of large and small municipalities. Before that, large municipalities were those with 250,000 inhabitants or more. That excluded everyone, or almost everyone. They improved things by reducing the population to about 100,000.
Even across Canada, there are very few large municipalities. I don't understand why the numbers are set so high. They don't match the investments we are able to make. So we understand why the government is targeting the larger communities.