Mr. Speaker, this is another area where I have some experience. I spent 10 years of my life building subway systems around the world, which is also very important and pertinent to Canadian infrastructure building.
The fact that we have allocated $53 billion in long-term sustainable funding gives the municipalities an idea of how to move forward with their infrastructure spending.
Infrastructure spending has many facets. There is short-term infrastructure spending, which is for basic repairs and maintenance for potholes, bridges, roads, and so on. Then, as we direct how we can grow a community in a sustainable way, we need to look at how we build roads and highways, power plants, and other social infrastructure that sustains a community.
Then there is longer-term infrastructure building that looks at the high-end, very expensive expenditures, such as for high-speed rail and subway systems. To give an example, in 1985-86, when we were building the Vancouver SkyTrain, the average cost per kilometre was $25 million. If we were to build that today, we would be paying $300 million. Therefore, we need to do this in a very slow, gradual, and determined way.