Mr. Speaker, I congratulate you on your election as our Speaker. I am looking forward to working with you for the next four years.
The economic action plan has been a very well-received program in my riding. The municipalities were extremely happy to receive funding for much needed infrastructure investment. It helped trigger dollars out of the province's well, through the building Canada fund and through the community adjustment fund. We saw a lot of investment in a number of different projects right across the riding. Virtually hundreds of millions were invested in the riding, federally, provincially and municipally. That helped create jobs in the short term and provided us with infrastructure that we needed to sustain our productivity and our quality of life throughout rural Manitoba.
Also, the EI work-sharing program really helped some of our major companies, especially in the steel industry where it did see a major downturn with the recession. They were able to keep staff available and on-site through the work share. They were able to do a lot of different upgrades to the plants in my riding. Then, at the end, they were in a position to completely get back up to full steam in very short order because all their staff were still on-site, employed and were able to turn a key and get the plants operating again. That created a bunch of jobs and put economic wealth back into the riding.