Mr. Speaker, one of the previous speakers spoke to the fact that Vancouver Island was having a difficult time, because of a large growth in its communities, with building the kind of infrastructure necessary to support that growth. There is a cost associated with both growth and shrinkage. At the end of the day, when populations become smaller, they have a smaller tax base but they need this kind of investment to sustain infrastructure that was built, in many, cases for larger communities. Unfortunately, that is very much a reality in Atlantic Canada.
What we need to look at specifically are the programs themselves: the municipal rural infrastructure fund; the Canadian strategic infrastructure fund; the border infrastructure fund; the gas tax program; and the two $400 million per year for two years transit fund. The transit fund was the result of an amendment to the budget last year. There can be no question that it is critically important in terms of congestion, Kyoto, air quality and social cohesion. I call on the government to recognize this worthy investment. It would be a larger winner for the government if it simply made this a part of the budget going forward beyond those two years.
With respect to the rest, I hope the government will build on the successes we have had in these relationships in building Canadian infrastructure.