Mr. Speaker, Ottawa has only covered 5% of all of Quebec's infrastructure spending in the past five years. The remaining 95% came out of Quebec's own coffers.
Amounts allocated in the last budget were welcome, but the whole process is bogged down by the federal government's insistence on approving projects one at a time.
The parliamentary budget officer confirmed last week that only one-third of the $13.6 billion announced last week has been spent. The rest is held up in Ottawa. In Quebec, the federal government is twice as slow as everywhere else, but the Liberals knew this before they launched their program. During the election campaign, they promised that uncommitted funds would be transferred in a lump sum to the federal gas tax fund at the end of the fiscal year.
Now that they are in power, the Liberals only want more power. The federal government's desire to control everything has brought everything grinding to a halt, and Quebec municipalities are paying the price.