Mr. Speaker, one of the concerns that I have had, and I raised it in my speech on this issue of gasoline taxes, is a problem in British Columbia that is constantly perpetuating and I would like the member for North Vancouver to talk about it.
British Columbia's economy has been affected largely because of the NDP. It was not helped by softwood lumber and certainly was not helped by a number of things that have happened in B.C.'s semi-recent past.
British Columbians seem to get so worked up about singular problems in its transportation infrastructure. We get angry about the Island Highway. We even get angry about fast ferries. We get angry about the potential selling-off of the management of the Coquihalla Highway. We also get angry about the Richmond airport's Vancouver line and whether or not that should go forward.
However there is something that certainly British Columbians need to appreciate and this point needs to be driven home. These are battles in a larger public policy war that are having to be fought because the federal Liberals in Ottawa have persistently failed to give British Columbia a fair share of its gas tax dollars.
The constant underlying theme about all these things, whether or not Highway 97 should be federalized, whether or not there should be a second bridge into Kelowna, whether or not there is appropriate and adequate funding for the Coquihalla, whether or not the Island Highway was properly financed, is that the Province of British Columbia is being handcuffed financially by taxpayers who think that they are paying more than enough at the pump to finance all these projects so that we should not have these problems. However, taxpayers are not seeing that money going to roads. I would invite the member for North Vancouver to comment.