Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has spent a great deal of time as the former transport critic articulating solutions to deal with the important issue of improving our infrastructure. He was absolutely correct in articulating the problems that we have in our infrastructure.
What exactly is that? It is a sign of the ultimate decrepitness and decay taking place amongst things that the government ought to be interested in. The government ought to be interested in working with the provinces to ensure that we have a strong, safe highway system. The government should also be interested in having a competent railway system. It should also be interested in ensuring that we have competent social programs. All of these are things that the government should be interested in and should be determining ways in which it can most effectively spend the money available today.
My colleague mentioned that our highway system is falling apart. It is falling apart because the government is unwise with where it spends taxpayers' money. This is the central problem. The government tends to go on about spending money. It thinks the solution to a problem is defined by the amount of money it puts toward a problem and the more zeros behind that one, the more effective it must be in solving the problem. Wrong. That is not what it is.
We need a plan and we need to determine how to spend the money and how to spend it wisely. We must use existing experiences and the best ideas we have to build the best plan possible. If we do that we will have effective infrastructure. And some day my colleague, I hope, will be the Minister of Transport and he can enact his solutions.