Mr. Speaker, again the member seems to be confused. The member is talking about roads. Is he talking about provincial roads? Is he talking about municipal roads? What is he talking about?
The fact is that the government has continued to make sure that we work in collaboration with all orders of government and that we are dealing with municipal infrastructure. If he wants to have a separate program with something else, if he wants to have dedicated taxes and if he wants to do other things, then he should come clean and say so. If that is what he wants, let us have a public policy debate about it.
The reality is that had we not instituted in 1994 the national infrastructure program, we would have a far larger national deficit on infrastructure than we have today. In fact the alternative would have been to do what the Tories did; we could have said that we cannot do this because we have a $42 billion deficit, that we cannot invest. We believe that was wrong. We believe we could do a lot of things constructively and we did them.
The reality is that this side of the House has demonstrated its commitment. I did not hear any response on the issues of payments in lieu of taxes, another good example of where that party says one thing but does not deliver. I watched the members with some shock, I must say, when they did not stand up to support the government on this important issue.
In some of the ridings of those members, I talked to the mayors and councillors and they were horrified. They did not even know that particular debate was going on here and that their members were not supportive of the government on an issue which has been near and dear to municipal governments since 1949.