Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question and it is related to a point I have made a number of times in the House. I definitely think the ports need access to infrastructure. It affects not only the ports but all the inland Canadian businesses, such as grain, that need the ports. They certainly need investments, but the member has made a very good point about infrastructure.
It was humorous yesterday when the Conservative parliamentary secretary was saying that they just started some infrastructure programs, that no one had done anything about it before. As members know, the Liberals started at least four infrastructure programs that were very popular with municipalities. There was the municipal rural infrastructure fund, the original cities infrastructure fund, the strategic infrastructure fund for big projects, and the border infrastructure fund. These are all very important. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities was delighted when these came in. As the member said, they want even more money.
The concern I have raised is exactly the one that the member raised. The municipalities have not heard from the Conservatives, who have amalgamated all those into one big pot, what the conditions are going to be and who is going to get them. I have said twice in the House at least, and I will say it for a third time that it is absolutely essential that municipalities get at least as much of the pot as they did before.
If the Conservatives want to fund other items such as the port authorities that need money, if they want to give money to provincial governments, if they want to give money to other programs out of this pot, that is fine, top the pot up, but the municipalities have to have at least as much as they have had in the past. They have all those needs for it, as the member said, such as recreation, potholes, sewers and clean water. They cannot get less money out of the new infrastructure funds. New initiatives like this should be added to the pot in order not to jeopardize the basic services that Canadians need, including clean water, properly treated sewage, recreation and other types of facilities that are in such a deficit, as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has so carefully analyzed and presented to parliamentarians.