Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure and with absolute respect that I welcome the member opposite. It is nice to hear a municipal voice coming from the party opposite.
I recall when I was first elected, every time I spoke as a former city councillor, what came across from the opposition side was, “Go back to city council if you want to fix those sorts of issues”. I am glad that we now understand that federal partnership is fundamental to building stronger communities and stronger cities. I am also glad that the gas tax, one of the great initiatives of the Liberal Party in the government of Paul Martin, is being celebrated as such.
My concern is this. One of the challenges we saw in simply transferring dollars to municipalities and not ensuring the money was spent in infrastructure was that quite often dollars like that would land in some municipalities, not all but some, and then be used by councillors to cut taxes rather than to make the investments we needed to grow the economy, to build stronger communities and ensure the infrastructure that was critically needed was built.
By simply advocating for a transfer of dollars to municipalities without any conditions, without any framework or national infrastructure program, how would the member opposite ensure that people on those city councils would not simply use the money to cut taxes and avoid the infrastructure deficit we are trying to address?