Thank you very much.

I'm not usually on this committee, but I'm delighted to be here today because we have the officials from the City of Vancouver.

Thank you very much for being here, Dr. Ballem, and other officials from Vancouver and from TransLink.

I absolutely concur with you about the busyness and the importance of the Broadway corridor. I have to say that the Broadway station is the perfect place to do political canvassing, because as you saw in the picture, the lineups are so long in the morning that they go all the way around the block. It's the perfect place to hand out leaflets. I know people would much rather be getting on the buses or the SkyTrain to go to work and so on.

You've outlined the very ambitious plans from the mayor's transportation transit plan—$7.5 billion over 10 years or so. It's a huge amount of money. Of course, as you say, we've just concluded the voting on the referendum, which I think is a first in Canada. Maybe there was one after the Second World War, but it's really something quite new. I'm very happy to say that I've sent in my ballot voting “yes”.

In terms of getting down to the money, the whole debate about infrastructure and public transit funding has been there as long as I can remember, going back to the 1980s when I was on city council. It was always the issue of not having the sustained, long-term funding that metro Vancouver needed to rely on. Now we're down to a referendum.

I have a couple of questions. Do you have concerns that now, with a precedent of a referendum and having that local base—I think it's $250 million a year that will have to be generated—this is creating a new order of things? Is this something that you anticipate we're going to have to rely on 10 or 20 years from now, another referendum?

In terms of the federal role, of course this is critical. You say in your brief that you're hoping the federal government will be a partner and will make it a reality, so it doesn't quite sound as if it's absolutely there yet.

How confident are you in terms of the federal program and its continuity? Ideally, what is the situation that we would need to see in metro Vancouver to see that sustained level of funding so that you can make your long-term plans and all of the investments that are required?

Libby Davies

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