Madam Speaker, I quite agree with the previous speaker that the infrastructure program is not delivering federal money directly to this type of infrastructure, sewage or water treatment. The reason is the infrastructure programs has always been set up so the municipalities have the primary decision making on how the money will be spent. If a municipality decides to infrastructure money on their arena for example, or in my riding on a nature path, instead of on sewers or water treatment, then always the federal government has bowed to the right of the grassroots, shall we say, to determine how federal money is spent.
Is the member suggesting that perhaps we should deviate from this practice, we should turn our back on it and propose that the federal government impose or require the municipalities and the provinces, for that matter, to spend money, the money they should be spending in co-operation with the federal government, on clear drinking water?
It seems to me, Madam Speaker, you cannot have it both ways. We cannot say that the federal government is not doing its job, if the decision making is left to the provinces and the municipalities and they are not making the right decisions. Surely the answer is for the federal government, if it is using federal dollars, to impose upon the provinces and the municipalities to spend money on good water for Canadians.