Mr. Speaker, the gas tax idea for municipalities came out of a lot of work that the leader of the New Democratic Party did when he was president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. We support the concept of consistent per capita funding to municipalities for the work they require on new projects. That is exactly what the gas tax does.
The Conservatives have chosen a different approach, which not only requires the municipality to identify the project, but to get the money together, complete the project and then apply to have the dollars reimbursed. This has caused municipalities a good deal of grief in getting the money out of the building Canada fund for the past number of years. We have seen evidence of this in terms of the 4% of dollars that have been released out of billions of dollars that were promised over the last few years.
The NDP agrees that the gas tax methodology is the one to follow to get money to communities.