Edited sentence: Also the stimulus required funds to be spent on infrastructure in the municipality where the application is granted to create local employment, whereas the jobs created by building streetcars would be in Thunder Bay and not Toronto.Baird noted that Toronto was the only one out of 2,700 applicants that didn't meet the eligibility criteria.Baird stated that streetcar funding clearly failed to meet the stimilus bill's requirement that the funds would have to be spent in 2 years, as that was meant to put money into the economy quickly to buoy demand and staving off deflation, while Transit City would have been a long-term project.However, federal Transport Minister John Baird rejected the request outright.On June 18, 2009, Miller requested federal funding from the Harper goverment's $12-billion stimulus spending, for new streetcars in the Transit City initiative.The city faced a deadline of June 27, 2009 to commit to the $1.2-billion deal signed with Bombardier for the 204 streetcars.To put pressure on the Harper government to come up with its one-third share of the cost, the Miller and Premier Dalton McGuinty flew to Thunder Bay yesterday to announce their funding for the new streetcars