Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his kind remarks.
The infrastructure program in my riding was very successful. The major success was that it built some infrastructure to help draw in new companies and industry to our area. That is very important. The infrastructure program is not meant just to create short term jobs; it is to set a tone, to set an infrastructure foundation for future growth and development. It did that in our area.
We worked very closely together. The communities and the municipalities chose the direction in which they wanted to go and I was there to help them do it. I went to every one of the chambers
and talked about the infrastructure program with them. I heard what their priorities were and acted on them.
For the future, yes, we want to talk about partnering with universities and hospitals, partnering with provincial and municipal governments. But there is another aspect I would like to see us get into, which is the whole area of being in partnership with businesses. We could help businesses build their infrastructure so that they could employ more people with more sustainable jobs. That would be a really helpful endeavour for instance in my riding of Annapolis Valley-Hants.
I look forward to the government coming forward and initiating this project so that we can do what we said we would do and continue to do what we have been doing, which is creating jobs and economic development.