Madam Speaker, the short answer to that is yes. The deteriorating infrastructure problem is a serious complication. It has been aggravated in recent years because the drive to expenditure reduction has meant that investment which should have gone into infrastructure to keep things up to date has been delayed. We are paying the price for that.
The only thing I would add is that there are other factors here. More people are moving to small communities. There is greater diversity of commercial activity in various communities, as the hon. member would know coming as he does from Red Deer. That has environmental implications. There are changes in the various environmental factors that can affect water, but there is no doubt that infrastructure is one important element of this and has to be addressed.
I would add in closing there needs to be a law on the books that encourages governments to act and not let these issues slip away. That is why we would propose to bring together the provinces and federal government to establish standards and then to enshrine them in a law on which Canadians could count and any government could not ignore.