Madam Speaker, I am so surprised by those questions and comments from such an intelligent member on the other side of the House that I am not sure where to start, but I will try.
First, with respect to the member for LaSalle—Émard, the fact is that he endorses this policy initiative proposed by Canadian Alliance. At the end of the quote that the former minister of finance put forward are conditions where he can walk away from his policy position later and say that he did not get complete agreement with the provinces on these 10 items of detail, therefore it will not work. That is what it is. However the quote reads:
If access to a portion of the gasoline tax ends up being the preferred mechanism of municipal leaders, the federal government will be at the table with the province offering to vacate tax room...
That is substantially the same as the motion put forward by the Canadian Alliance today.
The basic principle is the following. If we want to fund infrastructure across Canada, we can do it in a couple of ways. We can do it with the government coming along every year and deciding it will spend $100 million this year, $2 billion next year and zero the year after. It will look at all the projects and decide politically which ones are the best, but it will decide about the first infrastructure. There may be some real needs with Anthony Henday Drive in Edmonton, but the government actually thinks money is needed for luxury sky boxes at the Skyreach Centre because that is a determination it makes politically, which is an absolutely wrong decision. That is one way we can do this, which is a completely unacceptable way.
The second way, which is a better way, is for the federal government, which has a taxing power, to provide a stable source of revenue for the provinces and municipalities so that they can address their infrastructure needs which they know best.
The people of Edmonton and the surrounding communities know their infrastructures best, whether it is 23rd Avenue or Anthony Henday Drive, better than the federal government any day of the week, and those are the ones who deserve a stable source of funding, which is what this motion is trying to achieve.