Madam Speaker, the member mentioned items in the budget that have no business being there, such as pay equity, the Competition Act and the Navigable Waters Protection Act.
I want to ask her about infrastructure. She has worked hard on the city and urban agenda. Over the last two years some $2 billion of approved infrastructure funding never got delivered. It was approved, appropriated, promised, but never spent.
We are into the last month of the current fiscal year. The budget deals with the year starting on April 1, but we still have a month to go and we have money that is approved which is going to lapse.
It seems to me that even with regard to the budgeted infrastructure money, and I think 40% of the stimulus package is for infrastructure, that we just do not say it should be done and then put the shovel in the ground. There is a lot of pre-work. There are the considerations, the approvals, all of the administration and set-up.
I fear that the only reason work is not happening with the existing approved funds in the current fiscal year is that the government is trying to window dress the results of the current fiscal year to make it look a little bit better than it actually is. It appears to me that the government is putting partisan interests ahead of the people's interest.