Mr. Speaker, the member for Windsor West has a number of facts mixed up and confused.
First, with regard to the GST, the government has taken a very broad view of to whom the GST should apply. In the Department of Finance there is a list of 1,000 representations of what should not be subject to the GST. In the first phase, municipalities were subjected to the GST and now they will not be. That is a very positive thing.
For the member to suggest there will be huge amounts of bureaucracy, I guess he is saying that he would do something with the municipalities with the gas tax and would not work with the provinces. Then the provinces would claw it back, just like they did, unfortunately, with the Canada child tax benefit in the province of Ontario. This government has learned from that. With respect to the gas tax, the government will be working with the provinces and finding a way to make sure the money actually gets to the municipalities, such as the announcements we have made over the years on infrastructure which the member conveniently forgot about.
In the last five years there has been some $9 billion of federal money for municipal and provincial infrastructure. As the member well knows, some of that was announced quite recently with respect to Windsor and the border and the infrastructure. If he missed that press release, I would be happy to send it over to him. If he studies it carefully he will see that our government, working with the province and the city of Windsor, will streamline the infrastructure to ensure that the traffic moves back and forth across the border. I think the member is a little devoid on the facts on that one.