Madam Speaker, if we listen specifically to what the hon. member said, therein lies the problem. The Conservative Party would give the money to the provinces. It will not give it to the municipalities and we feel that we need to give the money directly to municipalities to let them be the ones to decide what they want to do.
I do not feel comfortable handing money over to Ralph Klein hoping that it makes its way into the hands of the municipalities. That is the wrong way to go and municipalities across the country have said that. Just as important, one thing we have to recognize about the announcement on the gas tax is that we keep the infrastructure programs.
What the Conservative Party is suggesting would take us back even worse than we were before the new deal. It would scrap three out of four of the infrastructure programs and then it would do a shell game where it would give the money to the provinces. The net amount to municipalities is the same before we even begin the new deal. It would just do it in a shell game. Instead of giving it to municipalities and empowering them, it would give it directly to people like Mr. Klein, who frankly I do not believe has the knowledge on a local basis of those individual projects that one has in municipalities.