Mr. Speaker, I will try to sum this up as quickly as possible.
I must, however, refute a couple of the comments by the parliamentary secretary. As usual, there was quite a substantial amount of fearmongering. Not once in the motion does it deal with $4.4 billion per year going into this program.
What it deals with is a portion of the excise tax raised on gasoline to go into an area where it was meant to go in the first place, highways, roads and, in this case, rural road reconstruction.
I am not suggesting for a moment $4.4 billion per year. What I am suggesting, however, is a plan. Is that too much to ask for, a priority that is being set and a plan that is set to deal with the priority? It may well mean $250 million a year over a 20 year period. It may well mean $350 million a year over a 10 year period. However, all I am suggesting is that the government get its head out of the sand and understands that there is a serious problem out there.
The hon. member from the Bloc unfortunately likes to make sure there are distinctions between federal and provincial jurisdiction. I am not getting into provincial jurisdiction. If indeed the plan should be that the provinces ultimately make the decision as to where that money should be spent I would applaud that. Take the money being generated by federal taxes, give it to the provinces and then they can apply it to the priorities on road construction. It is not that difficult a concept.
If provinces are now spending their dollars to fix federal responsibility roads then those dollars cannot be spent for provincial roads. This is not difficult to understand, so please do that.
There was some suggestion that other priorities would be affected substantially such as health care, education and all those wonderful priorities that we all recognize as being very major priorities. I suggest then that perhaps the $500 million that was spent in cancelling the EH-101s could have better been spent on road construction.
I suggest the $800 million blown by this government on the Pearson airport deal could have better been spent on road construction. Let us not confuse the issue with the priorities of health care and education. Let us just suggest there is a problem. A plan should be put in place and the plan dealt with.
We can talk about a national highways program with the next private member's motion I would like to table.