Madam Speaker, as I mentioned earlier, I have an issue brought to me by the private sector. It was a request for an inland terminal and was brought to me by some people who are trying to export out of southern Alberta. They have created a bit of an inland terminal to unload grain cars, but they want to expand it to be able to handle containers.
I think that is going to be critical as we go through the development of the agricultural industry, as I have explained. Customers are going to want to know where the product came from, not just what country. If there ever is a problem, they are going to want know what field it came out of and how it was produced.
There is this whole issue of containers, the ability to ship and the opportunity that exists if we can open the west coast ports. Right now, products get backed up. Producers cannot get trains to haul product out there in the first place. When they do get it there, they are in a queue thousands and thousands of containers long before they can get it shipped out of the area.
There is another particular issue in my riding. We have a huge concentration of intensive livestock operations in southern Alberta. In my riding, there is a capacity for 600,000 to 700,000 head of feeder cattle. The BSE issue affected us tremendously. It hurt a lot of people. We learned a very pointed lesson as a result of that. We learned that the fact is we must have more markets. We must have a variety of markets that will take a variety of products. We had all of our eggs in one basket and that was the American market. When that border closed, we were in trouble.
There is an important aspect to this. This should be done for all aspects of our economy. We need to get out and find markets. I think the government can play a big role in finding those markets, but the private sector needs to do its part as well. If a product is needed in another part of the world, we need to find out who those people are and make the arrangements to get it there. Without a proper transportation system, we will not be able to do that.
The opportunity is there for our country. The blessings that we have been given in this great country through our natural resources and the people who create the goods can really be maximized if we have a proper system in place, find the markets, get the transportation system in place, and then turn the private sector loose.