Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for putting into the record some of the astronomical dollar figures which are collected by the federal government. It reminds me again of the Liberal tendency to take any revenue it can get.
Another example would be the employment insurance premiums. Once the Liberals have a fund that is sufficient enough to cover EI, do they stop collecting or reduce the premiums? Of course not. They keep the premiums jacked up and put them into consolidated revenue. They spend the money on programs we never asked for and frankly were designed by someone far from the land we love.
Just to put a human face on those kinds of dollars, I would like to ask the member to comment on this. Last weekend I was part of a group of concerned citizens who took part in a cavalcade from Harrison Lake to Pemberton: up the back way, up the west side of Harrison Lake, alongside Lillouette Lake and up into the interior of British Columbia to the town of Pemberton.
Many of us think it would be a good idea to develop that into a secondary highway. It would be secondary access into that whole region. It would be an outlet if there were a problem on the Sea to Sky Highway. More important, it would be an opportunity to provide highway access to some aboriginal communities and other communities along the way. Right now they not only have no year round road access, but they have no telephones, no electricity and no way of communicating with the outside world. In each of these aboriginal communities, there is about one satellite telephone because cellphones do not work. That is it for communication. When the snows come, they are finished. They sit there and hope that nobody gets sick.
One thing they have been complaining about for many years is the need for federal government help to build a secondary highway so they can have some of the things that we take for granted in some of the larger centres. That is why I am a little nervous of the Liberals, especially the member for LaSalle--Émard. He talks about this program for cities, which might be interesting and have some good ideas in it, it is hard to say. However there is a lot more to this country than just cities. In fact highway construction is generally between cities and no one wants to grab that bull by the horns.
The cavalcade went by several aboriginal communities in a region that if it were developed would provide jobs and access to education. Right now when the roads open it is a two hour bus ride each way for their kids to go to school. Then they wonder why they cannot stay in school. They cannot take the punishment of driving up and down those roads, and that is when the roads are open.
There is a price tag of about $2 million on this highway. A lot of it will fall on the shoulders of the provincial government, which is proper. It is a provincial jurisdiction. However in British Columbia alone last year, Ottawa collected $495 million in gasoline taxes and it returned to British Columbia $13 million, or roughly 2.6% of the total budget.
My point and my question for my colleague is this. When we talk about putting money into infrastructure, we are not just talking about the glory of paved roads. We are talking about changing the lives of people and giving communities life that otherwise would fall by the wayside. I know the problem Saskatchewan has with retaining people, farmers and young people is in part because of transportation. Could the member give us some details as to whether this is as big an issue and problem in her province as it is in mine.