Mr. Speaker, we know that is already the case. Municipalities are already having to look at increasing property taxes to cover the expenses that they cannot meet given the current fiscal situation. We have seen the mayor of Mississauga directly say that this was going to be necessary in her community. Other communities across the country are having to look at that.
The offloading onto the shoulders of municipalities, because of cutbacks at the federal government level and at the provincial government level, have been quite serious all across the country in many municipalities, including my own of Burnaby. They have had to struggle against that.
Senior governments would have been happy to see municipalities step in and take over responsibilities that really were not in their jurisdiction. However, municipalities know, they are on the ground every single day and they know the difficulties of their citizens. They have often struggled with how to meet those commitments and how to meet those needs in their communities, but we cannot afford to let that continue.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities, in its recent report which all of us received in this place, points out a $123 billion infrastructure deficit that affects our communities all across this country, big and small. It points out that this is increasing, that the infrastructure deficit climbed far faster than even it had expected.
In my own riding of Burnaby--Douglas there are a number of important infrastructure needs that are not being assisted by the federal government even when they fall in areas of federal jurisdiction. Burnaby receives a large number of immigrants and refugees each year and is one of the major settling points of immigrants and refugees in British Columbia.
The city of Burnaby, seeing the need for services to that community, proposed establishing an immigration service hub, a physical centre in the city of Burnaby where new Canadians, where immigrants and refugees could find the services that they need to access regularly without having to go into the city of Vancouver or travel all over the Lower Mainland.
Something like that would be absolutely necessary to help them establish in our community and get the services they need to settle appropriately. Yet, the federal government will not participate in that program. The city found the money to offer the land, but no other level of government would step up to the plate and help that happen.
We have also seen it with Burnaby Lake which is an urban lake and subject to all of the pressures of being smack dab in the middle of a large urban area. It is infilling because of the silt that regularly flows into the lake. This is an important open water lake. A number of species demand and need an open water lake, and gradually it is turning into a mud flat.
The city has had for many years an environmentally sound proposal to dredge that lake to ensure that it continues as an open water lake, to ensure that those various species can continue to live there successfully, and also to ensure that it is available for the citizens of Burnaby and the surrounding communities as a recreational place. Yet, we cannot get the money from the federal government to assist with that kind of program.
The previous Liberal government found money for a similar program to dredge Wascana Lake in a Liberal member's riding, but no, it could not find the money to assist Burnaby with that and now the Conservative government seems to be having the same difficulty.
We are going to continue to push to ensure that this important municipal infrastructure spending happens in our communities because we know how crucial it is to its success.