Mr. Speaker, it helps to look at the recent history. Twenty years ago there was no federal funding for municipal infrastructure. Municipalities handled their own infrastructure without federal programs. Throughout the last two decades, programs have formed to fund capital projects, and we now have the very generous gas tax transfer. Our government made it permanent, and it has drastically increased municipal revenues.
Municipal revenues have grown by over 60% in the last decade, even though inflation and population growth combined have been roughly 30%. On top of that, direct revenue to the municipalities, such as large capital programs like the economic action plan and the building Canada fund, fund one-third of the costs of individual projects.
We have seen a massive increase in federal and provincial resources available to municipalities to fund their infrastructure and a prodigious increase in the direct revenues that municipalities enjoy, yet the NDP still believes that more money is the solution to our infrastructure problems.
My question is this: why did the NDP vote against all of the previously instituted programs that have so dramatically increased the resources available to our municipalities?