Mr. Speaker, I was interested in my colleague's comments, particularly as he was describing having lived through this once through former premier, Gordon Campbell, in British Columbia, and indicating what the net effect of those tax cuts and the tax cut agenda had on constituents in British Columbia.
I come from Ontario and we all remember very well the record of the Mike Harris government there. Mike Harris was the self-proclaimed tax fighter. That agenda not only took millions and millions of dollars out of communities and impoverished families in our communities, but the downloading side and the impact of those tax cuts on our municipalities left our community, the city of Hamilton, in desperate need of money for infrastructure reinvestments.
We have had a number of water and sewer main breaks and our roads are in terrible shape. The government says that it is not in the business of dealing with potholes. The government ought to be because it is the senior level of government and our municipalities need our help to deal with those fundamental infrastructure deficits.
I wonder whether my colleague could reflect on whether the same experience is true in B.C. I am not as familiar with what is happening to municipalities out there but from my perspective as an Ontarian, and, first and foremost, as a Hamiltonian, I had hoped that this mini budget would actually reinvest in our cities and give places like Hamilton an opportunity to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.