Madam Speaker, I talked to municipalities in my riding, and while I was a mayor for part of the last Parliament's term, I saw that dollars were not getting to the front line. I am not sure if they are going to members' ridings on the government side or larger urban centres, but I am speaking from my background as a rural mayor in my previous role. I see some colleagues on this side of the aisle here, such as the members for Parry Sound—Muskoka, Simcoe—Grey and Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes. They also saw these challenges in their previous roles. The dollars are not getting there.
The applications are coming in, but they are being delayed and stalled. We can look at the Morrisburg streetscape project or at my neighbouring riding in eastern Ontario, the township of North Grenville and the town of Kemptville. It has been years and years of waiting. The municipality has applied and asked for the dollars and the provincial government has given the okay, but it has just been silence for eight months.
There is no need for these delays. If the dollars are there, put the dollars out and let us get shovels in the ground. I will say in a bipartisan way that I believe we can be better and smarter in terms of the timelines.
We are now almost in February. It would be great if these projects were approved today with a nod of the head and an agreement was signed. I am sure we can make that happen. However, even now, to get the budgets finalized and get the RFPs out and the shovels in the ground, we are seriously jeopardizing another year of projects getting started in a lot of rural municipalities that I see.