Madam Speaker, the facts are simple and very direct: 99% of federal transfers to provinces for roads and highways are spent east of Ontario. That is a given. The issues the member mentioned about the piddling amounts for other matters in British Columbia just do not rate on the Richter scale when we look at the amounts of money that are spent elsewhere.
Just as an example, I now have on my desk a stack of announcements by Liberal members from the Maritime provinces, a stack that is so thick, and again, I have only been collecting them since October. These are moneys spent on harbours in the Maritime provinces and yet we cannot get money for dredging in the Lower Fraser River, which is extremely important not only to keep the water flowing in the river but to prevent flooding of a large part of the lower mainland that is protected by dikes. The money is simply not being spent there.
The issues I mentioned, the Vancouver port, the Surrey Fraser docks and the international airport in Vancouver, are federally mandated facilities and all the government does is take money out of those facilities, bring it into the big general pot here in Ottawa and then spend it elsewhere. Some of that money has to come back to support infrastructure in British Columbia. It has to. There is just no question about it. Fairness requires it, but there is also a dramatic need, for a variety of reasons, that this money should be spent in British Columbia where it is earned.