Mr. Speaker, I do not know why my time is being used up between these two members and their heckling and attacks on each other, but we can all take things out of context. I do not think it is fair when we take shots at each other rather than address the very important issue of our cities and communities.
I am very proud of the work that we did on our cities. I remind members that we have to go back to 1993 when we were elected and had a $42 billion deficit left over from the Mulroney era of government. We had to deal with all of that. Then we had to start reinvesting and bringing our cities to the table. We clearly have a very strong commitment and we had committed a lot of money.
What the Conservatives have done with this $33 billion package is that they have taken seven or eight other programs and thrown them all in under “infrastructure” in their building Canada fund, so it looks like a huge amount of money. But a lot of our cities are going to have compete with each other, so again it is part of the Conservative mantra of dividing cities and dividing our communities to fight for the pot of money that is there.
Again, it is going to be used for national highways. That takes an awful lot of money. It would not take much to drain that fund very quickly. The Conservatives can bundle a bunch of things together and say it is the biggest infrastructure fund they have ever had. We could do the exact same thing.
However, what our cities want to see is investment. They want to be respected. They want to be invited to the table as partners because there is no way that we can build Canada on our own. It is going to take all three levels of government to work in a cooperative way to build a strong, successful Canada.
There is no way that we can do it on our own. Neither can the provinces or the cities. Not to cooperate lacks intelligence. Doing the right thing and the smart thing means that we work together with all three levels of government.