Mr. Speaker, I am always happy to respond to a question from my colleague, who is familiar with municipal affairs since he worked as a municipal councillor and mayor. We both have the same background in that respect.
When we took power in 2006, I met with people from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and the figure that came up was a $60 billion deficit. Based on that information, we made a commitment to design a new program called Building Canada. At the time, municipalities asked for long-term, flexible and predictable funding.That is what we gave them.
As for the negotiations between the Canadian and Quebec governments, they took some time: over five years. We have been in power for only 20 months. I have worked on this issue with my colleague, the hon. Minister for Canadian Intergovernmental Affairs, Benoît Pelletier, whom we know well, since he is from the Outaouais area.
Obviously, open federalism has its benefits. We were able to resolve this issue and—as the member knows—we were able to deal with the issue of the imbalance, which as everyone will recall, was brought up by the Bloc Québécois.
We also knew that we had to take action. Unfortunately, the Bloc Québécois was unable to resolve the issue. We did something about it. The Liberals did not think there was a fiscal imbalance. So we dealt with it.
Obviously, I am committed to making sure that negotiations with the Government of Quebec continue as they should.