Mr. Speaker, my colleague raised a good point. The fact is that this legislation does nothing to address the urgent and immediate needs of British Columbians.
We know in B.C. where the problems lie. We have seen them for more than 12 years now while the Liberal administration has laid back and done nothing about them. Now just prior to an election that the Liberals are fearing they will lose, they are rolling out this council and are pretending to throw money at the problem, without being very specific. They just say, “Here is another slush fund. We will appoint this patronage council and that will solve all of the problems”. That is the way they deal with these problems. That is not good enough for British Columbia.
B.C. residents want to know what the government is going to do. No more talk, let us get down to action. Specific projects like the South Fraser perimeter road and twinning the Portmann Bridge, the North Fraser road and some of these other projects that are clearly identified need action now. They are beyond the point of talking. They are beyond the point of conjecture or speculation. They are at the point where action is needed.
The infrastructure that we are dealing with in British Columbia was constructed in 1963, yet the population has tripled since then. We are drastically behind where we need to be if we are going to serve British Columbia, or serve the country for that matter, as the gateway to the Asia-Pacific region.
I thank my colleague for raising this issue and for the excellent work he is doing as our transport critic. I just wish we had the opportunity to form government and actually take action on the things that we have been talking about for so long.