Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Brandon—Souris, in his rather lengthy and long-winded address, raised a number of points, some of which actually had some merit. However, I would like to ask for some clarification and comments on a couple of those points.
The hon. member raised a very legitimate and valid point about the state of rural roads in the prairie provinces. Both coming from the prairie provinces, we share the concern of the state of rural roads. He pointed out that $175 million has been allocated for the prairie provinces over five years. Is this to be equally distributed among the three prairie provinces or is it just for one prairie province?
We all know that the federal government collects literally billions of dollars per year in fuel taxes. When these fuel taxes were introduced to placate the critics, the promise was “Yes, we are going to charge you a tax on all the fuel you purchase, but we are going to reinvest that into the road and highway systems of the country”.
I have a question for the member, even though I run the risk of allowing him to talk longer. With $3 billion per year in revenue and $175 million paid out over five years in road construction, is there not something fundamentally wrong with this picture? When I take $3 billion a year, that is $250 million a month in fuel taxes that the federal government takes in, and, in its largesse, it will give us on the prairie provinces $175 million. Would the hon. member comment further on what he knows about that?