Mr. Speaker, I am not knocking the democratic process whatsoever but the reality is the municipalities look after their very local interests and provinces look after the regional interests. The difficulty is we have to have somebody with the money who will look after the national interests and come to the rescue when provinces or regions are in trouble.
I submit to the member a classic example that the roads are in dreadful shape in Saskatchewan. It is a crisis in Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan government cannot afford to repair them. It is just a desperate situation.
I would submit to the member, if we followed the motion and gave the money to the provinces, on a provincially divided basis, does he think Alberta would come to the rescue of Saskatchewan and its roads? Does he think Ontario would spend in Saskatchewan to save the roads?
It is the same thing down in Nova Scotia. There are severe highway problems in Nova Scotia and recently, in the last few years I have been in the House, federal money went to improve highways in the corridor between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. This was federal money. Because these are poorer provinces, they could not afford it.
What it all boils down to is we have a national government that does not only look at the national interests, and I talked about the Trans-Canada Highway, but that also can plunge in there and attend to the very local interests where those regions of the country cannot afford to look after themselves.
I am sorry, but the record of municipal and provincial governments is that there is always an element, and I do not say this disparagingly, of fiscal selfishness. In my own region, my own city of Hamilton looks to getting the cash to look after itself and it is not looking beyond its borders. That is the case.
Others have mentioned the fact that with this motion there would probably be internal civil war between the cities in the various provinces taking this money at the expense of the rural municipalities. As I say, if there is a poor region in the country that cannot afford or does not have enough cash to attend to an essential infrastructure, it would be helpless.