Mr. Speaker, I assure my hon. colleague and friend that small craft harbours are certainly not neglected.
Back in my first year in the House and my first day on the standing committee I would suggest, I raised the issues of infrastructure and wharves involved with small craft harbours. My initiative encouraged the committee to do a major study which resulted in an extra $100 million being put into the budget. That $100 million ran out last year.
What the government did in the last budget was not only to secure that amount of money on a permanent basis, not for five years as was previously injected into the budget, but on a permanent basis. We added to that an extra $11 million. Last year we added to the base of the small craft harbours budget, $31 million.
One problem we have with small craft harbours is we now have a number of wharves scattered throughout the country, many of them in Quebec and Ontario, that fishermen no longer use, but they are used by towns, recreation groups and marine associations. Many groups would like to have these wharves. Many of the wharves are not being used at all and are falling into a state of disrepair.
It is similar to interest on a credit card. It has been taken away from our small craft harbours funding. What we have done this year is we have added an extra $10 million to the budget, and in fact over the long term we have added a lot of money to address small craft harbours. The focus is to clean them up and get rid of them, so that we can use the money for the real purpose of the wharves that the fishermen need.