Certainly, and thank you, MP Bachrach. The honorific used to be “Your Worship”, but I'm not sure right now.
It's been substantial, and it has been gutting to our budgets. With the transit fund, over the last year, with ridership down 70% to 90%, we were in serious trouble all across the country, and our operating budgets took a hit. What that meant is that we immediately had to swing into action by cutting our infrastructure. In Prince George, for instance, $25.9 million in projects that we needed—roads, water, other projects—had to be put aside and put off.
In the fall we really welcomed the safe restart program. The impact that had on operating budgets was substantial and important.
The knock-on effects of putting off or cancelling infrastructure projects are substantial. What we saw were the jobs that would have come in through those construction projects. We also saw that things we needed to get done are not being done across the country. When you slow down the economy because of a pandemic, you slow down infrastructure because of the pandemic. These aren't projects that are want-to-haves; these are need-to-haves, so yes, there has been a substantial impact across the line.
I want to say that in particular it's really highlighted some of the cracks in our broadband. The digital divide was really highlighted, because we needed to have a stronger reliance on the Internet all across the country for health care and education, and in our case, for provincial government services, like applying for a ballot to vote in our local election. This is substantial, and it's important, and it has been highlighted.