Mr. Speaker, I would like to be able to say that I was absolutely bowled over with enthusiasm by that last speech, but I have to say that I was not.
In fact, I would like to tell the hon. member about a little phone-in contest held by CBC North. I know that he represents the north. I represent a certain section of the north. It was based on the fact that the town of Iroquois Falls had to sell its municipal office to pay to pave its roads. The call-in show on CBC in Sudbury asked what other things we could sell off so that small northern municipalities could actually have paved roads.
I have to tell members that my wife almost had to tie me to the chair because I had so many choice suggestions about what we could sell off to benefit people in northern Ontario. Now that I am a diplomatic member of Parliament I will not give members some of the suggestions, but if anybody wants to go out for a beer afterwards I would be more than willing to share some of my suggestions.
So here we have the town of Iroquois Falls, which is suffering from years and years of neglect, but it is not suffering on its own. In fact, our whole corridor up Highway 11 is suffering from years of neglect and a lack of infrastructure dollars. There is no excitement up there about any promises on infrastructure, because we were told that the great COMRIF program was going to revitalize the north and all our little communities were going to get a fair chance. Everybody did their best and tried to make sure they would get a share of the funding.
Lo and behold, when the first round came back we found that Moosonee was turned down. Hearst was turned down. Kapuskasing was turned down. Timmins was turned down. Iroquois Falls was turned down. Smooth Rock Falls was turned down. Kirkland Lake was turned down. In fact, we could actually take a road map of Highway 11 north and see where this Liberal government said, “Sorry, none of these communities qualify”.
I am talking about municipal rural infrastructure. Who are we losing out to? We are losing out to the big municipalities in southern Ontario, the urban municipalities. Our small communities of 500 and 1,000 people are losing to them. Let us be honest and frank here. If governments are going to be putting in money, they are going to be putting it into where the votes are, so our northern municipalities got zero, zippo, nothing.
I would like the hon. member to explain this. Will this government commit in this new budget to actually delivering on some of the promises for our region of the north?