Mr. Speaker, we have delivered on this program as we promised in the election campaign that ended a year ago today with our successful election.
We said we would respond to local needs and local priorities as established by municipalities. That is exactly what we have done. We have done it right across the country with the support of all the provinces, and do you know what? We have done it on reallocation, not on increasing the debt of this government. Most of those municipalities and provinces have done the same thing.
In the course of this program we have put 100,000 Canadians back to work. We anticipated most of these projects would put people to work on construction in the short term but they would also create spin-off jobs which will put still another 100,000 Canadians back to work.
With over 7,000 permanent jobs that have been created so far, this program has been a great success.