Mr. Speaker, I would first like to congratulate my colleague from Joliette, our distinguished House leader who was promoted. Previously, he was the finance critic. He is an economist by training.
The infrastructure file should be the responsibility of the Department of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. Therefore we were surprised this morning when the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance spoke first.
I asked the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities about this and he replied that the finance department was responsible for the gas tax and that it should carry the debate.
However, it is important for us to understand this. The cities of Quebec and of the rest of Canada felt the impact of the Liberals' attempt to eliminate the deficit in the early 90's. They cut health and educations transfers to the provinces. The result was that the provinces finally had to look elsewhere for resources and transferred responsibilities to cities in order to maintain the same level of service in the health and education networks.
I found it quite amusing because the Conservatives accused the Liberals and the Liberals accused the Conservatives. We should remember that it was the Trudeau government that got Canada into debt, although my colleague knows that the debt grew under the Conservatives with the result that cities are in debt today. That is what they are telling us when they speak of the $123 billion infrastructure deficit.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance told us this morning that they had finally given enough and that what was important to them was reducing Canada's debt. Only then, can we begin reducing the infrastructure deficit. In the meantime, the infrastructure deficit of cities is growing. This does not mean that cities will have the money or the capacity to borrow to make repairs. It means that the infrastructure will age and that the corresponding debt will balloon.
I would like my learned colleague, an economist, to speak to us about this.