Minister, the Trudeau government is giving Saskatchewan less than 1 per cent of the public transit infrastructure fund money promised in the 2016 budget, even though Saskatchewan has 3 per cent of Canada's population.

Even at that, this money is only for public transit, not one dime for Saskatchewan's roads or highways, the lifeblood of economic activity throughout our province. The Trudeau government has failed to move on pipelines to get our energy products to market. It's failing to fund improvements in Saskatchewan's road infrastructure, so it's failing Saskatchewan's communities.

Now, as a former teacher, surely our Prime Minister should understand that an E for effort just doesn't cut it. He's getting Fs all around. Minister, when will this Trudeau government pony up and give Saskatchewan its fair share of the infrastructure funding that our province needs?

Hon. Amarjeet Sohi, P.C., M.P., Minister of Infrastructure and Communities: Once again, honourable senator, thank you so much for your question. The first thing I did when I took over this portfolio was to reach out to my provincial and territorial counterparts. One thing that we heard from Saskatchewan was their ability or their inability to use the existing Building Canada Fund that they were allocated in 2014.

So we have allowed them to use that fund by making changes to the Building Canada Fund. So we are delivering on the commitment. We are delivering on behalf of provinces, regardless of the party affiliation.

Infrastructure is not about partisanship. Infrastructure is about building communities that we all desire to live in. It is about building safe, sustainable, inclusive and welcoming places.

My relationship with the Province of Saskatchewan is very positive, and we are building a strong partnership with them. As far as the allocation of transit funding is concerned, it is based on the ridership of the transit systems. It is not based on the population of transit systems or the population of the provinces. Had we done population-based allocation for transit and for water and wastewater, then maybe the province of Saskatchewan would have received less. So that is why, in order to balance them receiving less money under the public transit system, we have created a system where they receive more money under the water and wastewater system. But, when you combine both of them together, each province and territory basically receives the same amount of money they would have received under their population-based allocation. So we are trying to be fair, as much as possible, recognizing that transit needs are more prevalent in big cities, but water and wastewater, housing, recreational, culture needs are widespread throughout the country. In some cases, they are more prevalent in the rural and smaller communities where they didn't have the resources in the past. So we try to allocate our resources based on need and also apply the lens that, overall, all provinces should be getting their fair share.

So if you look at the combined water and wastewater and transit, the Province of Saskatchewan is receiving resources based on its population.