Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Rogers.
You correctly identified a concern that I share, and I've shared this with the deputy and our senior officials as well. The infrastructure department, understandably, is often preoccupied with multi-billion dollar mega projects in the transit sector and greening electricity grids. These are very important for the economy of the country, for people who live in large urban centres and for a bunch of reasons in terms of fighting climate change, but we also need to be conscious that a small investment.... There's a water project, for example, in your riding. Two projects have been approved that haven't yet started construction—a water treatment plant and a water storage tank. The work will begin this spring and in the fall of 2023. The watermain projects were started in May of 2022.
A number of these smaller community projects.... I asked for examples of the kinds of projects in small rural communities you would represent in Newfoundland and Labrador, Mr. Rogers. Some of these investments can be as small as $365,000 from the Government of Canada, but combined with the money that the municipality and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador put in, they allow these small communities to do projects they would otherwise not be able to do.
Your riding is not dissimilar to mine in this respect. There's a small town in Kent County, New Brunswick called Rexton, in the northern part of my riding. If they had to upgrade their water system to maintain its health and safety, if they had to put that on ratepayers in their municipalities or the tax base of their small rural village, it would simply not support these investments, which people understandably expect governments to work on collaboratively.
Your province has been a great partner for us, Mr. Rogers, in the last number of months. When I was here last, the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador had one of the largest balances of unallocated money, including for projects in smaller communities like the ones you represent. Premier Furey and his government have been extremely effective in working with us.
The good news is that we got that amount of unallocated funding down to zero, which means that many of those very projects that you're concerned about and have talked to me about for communities in your constituency are going to be funded.
I'm hoping that you'll have a very busy spring and summer announcing a lot of this good news in your riding, Mr. Chair, and we would welcome, obviously, you, yourself, announcing projects too, Mr. Chair. I don't want to pretend that it was only Mr. Rogers who could have this opportunity.