Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Minister, I noted that your colleague MP Blois, who is the National Liberal Rural Caucus chair, was an advocate for making rural fire stations eligible to apply for funding from the Canada Community-Building Fund, or CCBF.

Infrastructure Canada’s website has numbers available to the public on the allocated funds from the CCBF by the province and territory. Rural volunteer fire departments are crucial in so many communities.

My question, minister, is very specific: Since this fund was amended earlier this year to include fire halls, can you please share with us how successful this addition is and how many rural fire halls have applied and succeeded in receiving funds?