Transport committee  I don't have a list of them with me, no.

Transport committee  Absolutely. What's important for us and our members is the understanding of the critical nature of infrastructure in this country, the importance of urban transit within that broader question in the larger and medium-sized communities, and the negative economic impacts of the lac

Transport committee  I'm not going to get into who's downloading on what, because you're right: there's a lot of downloading from the provinces. My comment is more that the property tax is being stretched farther for more things now than it was in 1985. Do you want to...?

Transport committee  As we said before, the degree of downloading since 1985, the date you mentioned earlier, is a significant burden on the municipalities. It stretches the property tax beyond what it was intended to do and stretches the municipal coffers so they can't continue to provide the kinds

Transport committee  The third principle is that there must be some flexibility so that we can have national principles and a national perspective, but also the flexibility that lets us have different solutions for Toronto and Vancouver. We can try to obtain results at the local level, but within the

Transport committee  I can't give you a percentage; I don't have that figure. But in a general sense, procurement at the municipal level is about $100 million per year.

Transport committee  I don't know. I don't have the answer to that question.

Transport committee  I think we can probably get it, yes.

Transport committee  I don't know. We'll get that for you as well.

Transport committee  Spending of local governments would have increased, I would imagine, as the costs increase for delivering of services, the upgrading or maintenance of infrastructure, and the downloading of responsibilities that have meant that municipalities have had to put more resources into t

Transport committee  I don't have the figures you have. I would also question the percentage increase in revenues of the federal and provincial governments and how those increases are seen in proportion to the increase in the municipal revenues. I believe we could probably get that figure as well, bu

Transport committee  Adam will answer part of that, but I would say that it is not fair to say that costs have increased on roads, etc., at around inflation rate and property tax has increased by inflation. The demand on the property tax has increased more than inflation, because more things have bee

Transport committee  First of all, despite what is in the Constitution, the government has for several years decided to work with the municipalities and it is going very well. But it does not operate outside the relationship with the provinces and territories. There is a link between the federal go

Transport committee  I think that the strategy is not necessarily the most important aspect; the principles are. If we have strong global principles, we can get strong local results. So that means that we base the strategy on principles, and long-term planning and funding. That is an important princi

Transport committee  We believe it is essential to have a fund for public transit within the context of overall infrastructure issues. Municipalities have different challenges. Some of those challenges have to do with public transit, and others have to do with infrastructure that is not related to p