Madam Speaker, I suppose it is all a matter of perception. From where I sit, we see all the support going into the big cities and we do not see enough coming our way. When we look at the infrastructure being invested, especially into the major urban centres, we see a lot more dollars being spent than what we are seeing spent in rural Canada.
There has always been this argument. Do we look at funding from the standpoint of a per capita basis, or do we look at it from the standpoint of need? Need is very subjective in the eyes of the beholder, but by basing it on per capita all the dollars are going to flow into urban centres where 80% of Canadians live. I made that fact known today.
We have to address the issue of ensuring that the economy functions overall and that Canadians are getting the services they need. This is one of the reasons I jumped into political life. I am a cattle farmer. That is what I do for a living. I ran a small business in livestock export as well. I moved cattle around North and South America to our various clients.
The real issue is that rural Canadians are not second-class citizens. We have to ensure we have the same level of service from financial sectors, infrastructure and service from government that is available to people in urban centres. The member has to remember that when we have to drive to our post office, it is a 20 or 25 mile drive in some situations, whereas everybody in an urban riding may go down to the end of the block or, even better, have their mail delivered to their door.