Transport committee  It is a tricky question for us because, as a federal government, we want to respect provincial and territorial jurisdictions, and municipalities are creatures of provinces and territories. We hope that the gas tax fund and other programs we have might help them in terms of buildi

Transport committee  That's basically how the relationship works.

Transport committee  I'm good. Thank you.

Transport committee  I'll back up a little bit because one of the first things we do when we receive a project is look at the eligibility. We determine if the requested—

Transport committee  Sure. We will look at the governance related to the project to make sure they have a viable governance structure in place to manage the project. We also look at their fiscal capacity and all sources of funding to make sure they have the financial wherewithal to support the proj

Transport committee  We don't have that number here, but we can certainly try to get that number for you.

Transport committee  Yes, I would agree with that statement. That's one of the key reasons. The Government of Canada does have a role to play in the space of economic development, so the new building Canada plan does support those types of objectives, yes.

Transport committee  Under the new building Canada plan, as I said, we have three key funds. We have the community improvement fund, which includes the gas tax fund as well as the GST rebate. Infrastructure Canada has nothing to do with the GST rebate because that's administered by CRA. In terms of

Transport committee  I will certainly endeavour to provide that to the committee.

Transport committee  It would be very difficult to do that. A number of think-tanks and organizations have tried to quantify what the infrastructure gap, deficit, or need is in the country. Depending on who you ask, you'll get a different number, whether it's $200 billion, $100 billion, or whatever t

Transport committee  The key problem goes back to how municipalities and other asset owners collect information and if they're able to collect information. There's a bit of a capacity issue there in terms of various organizations and municipalities being able to tell us what kind of infrastructure th

Transport committee  We only have the answers that may have been provided to us by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities or other national think-tanks that have tried to do some work on this.

Transport committee  The objectives of the new building Canada plan are really to increase the economic competitiveness of Canada. There are also other objectives in terms of the type of asset classes that we're supporting, support for the environment, and support for other key objectives of the Gove

Transport committee  You have to look at our programs as kind of a continuum of interventions on the part of the federal government. If you look at the gas tax fund, it's a transfer of funding to municipalities, which allows the municipalities to make their own decisions with respect to their priorit

Transport committee  We can certainly try, yes.