Transport committee  If you take those numbers from Quebec and project them across the country, it's the same story. I think that perhaps the professor from the University of Ottawa, with whom I get a sense that you don't really agree, which is probably a good thing.... One of the comments I would ma

Transport committee  No, I don't think we do share that. We certainly are paying attention and watching for any lag that may happen, but the bilateral agreements have been negotiated in fairly short order. The minister had said that we would have these done by the end of March-early April, and he has

Transport committee  There's no question. We've been saying for many, many years that the preference is the allocation-based formula. There's long-term, predictable funding, municipalities see the money coming, they can bank it, they can borrow against it, they can do bigger projects, and there isn't

Transport committee  Yes, for sure. Fifty million dollars was allocated to FCM to develop a national program on asset management capacity building. We have been working very closely with associations like our colleagues here at the table, and other provincial and territorial associations across the

Transport committee  As I said in my comments, the priorities are the following: cost-sharing; a fair balance of municipal and provincial projects; and a focus and an understanding of the unique needs and nature of rural communities and their lack of capacity, as compared to the larger cities. Those

Transport committee  Oh, that second question is quite something. On the first part, we, as a country, have taken very good steps in taking time to be very thoughtful about learning from phase one and developing lessons learned and then applying those lessons in the bilateral agreements that are com

Transport committee  I said that it would be preferable that the infrastructure program be similar to the gas tax program. The gas tax program model is preferable to those that depend on presenting a request. In a sense, the government prefers to have programs that are based on submitting requests, a

Transport committee  We were very clear in response to the budget that we were very happy to see a national housing strategy. It's such an important milestone for our country to have a housing strategy. We were very disappointed that the money for social housing repairs would not come sooner in the

Transport committee  It is a normal confusion. I mean, you're right: the federal dollars follow the work. What's important is that the agreements get signed and that the ability to commit to projects happens quickly enough so that the work can be done, the jobs can be created, and the economic activi

Transport committee  Obviously one way to avoid the bottleneck is to have an allocation-based approach, but we're not talking about that in this particular case. With respect to bottlenecks, there are the administrative requirements in this country of federal-provincial agreements, and that takes ti

Transport committee  We have been encouraged by what we've seen, largely for the three reasons I outlined. We had talked about the need for a clearer cost-share, which the federal government has negotiated with the provinces in the agreements that we've seen so far. We've talked about clearer stateme

Transport committee  The challenges, as you've identified, of the one-third cost-share did create some limitations on the opportunities for small communities. This is why, as Pat alluded to a few minutes ago and we've said a great many times, our preference has always been an allocation-based formula

Transport committee  Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having us here today. I am very pleased to be here to discuss progress regarding the Investing in Canada infrastructure plan. It's important to have this conversation with this committee. We have had a few conversations with this c

Finance committee  The relationship between the federal government and municipalities is very engaged. As I said in my comments, the engagement around budget 2017 was exceptional. The conversations are deep and getting deeper. So the idea that municipal government has a role to play in nation build

Finance committee  Sure, just very quickly.... We are always looking to simplify the process, so those conversations are ongoing. The government and the department have been very receptive to the discussions. I should just caution that there are times when.... There is an assumption that the timi