Madam Speaker, my question is for the Parliament Secretary to the Minister of Transport. It is further to a question that I asked in the House to which the minister responded that the province of Nova of Scotia and the province of New Brunswick, in particular, did not violate an agreement.
Since that time, through the access to information program, we have become aware of another letter in which the minister said to the province of New Brunswick that it could charge tolls on this federally funded highway under two conditions. The first condition was that the amount of the federal contribution would still have to be cost shared with the province on a 50:50 basis. The second condition was that any revenue from the tolls would be an additional source of funds to be dedicated solely to the project in question.
I sent to the parliamentary secretary a quote from Hansard wherein the minister of finance for New Brunswick said “We had always made it clear that the provincial money we invested in these sections of road would be recovered”. That totally contradicts the minister's letter which says that the province must maintain its cost share ratio of 50:50 on this highway. There is a contradiction. The province has totally contradicted the words of the federal minister.
With respect to the second condition, the minister said that any revenue from the tolls must be totally dedicated to the project in question. Again I sent to the parliamentary secretary a newspaper article which quoted the premier of the province of New Brunswick as saying “Yes, there is some money coming back and it will be applied to health care”. They used the figure of $321 million. Again the federal minister said that all the revenue from the highway must go to the project. The province now says it is going to health care or general revenues or whatever.
I ask the parliamentary secretary to address this letter and the absolutely unambiguous statements and conditions that the minister applied to the province of New Brunswick if it was going to charge tolls on a federally funded highway: that is, that the province must maintain its share, which it has not, and that the province must dedicate all the revenue to that specific project, which it has not.