Good morning, Mr. Chairman.
Bonjour, mesdames et monsieurs. Bienvenus à Vancouver. Thank you so much for being here with us.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am simply going to paraphrase some of our brief. It is a long brief, but I hope everyone has an opportunity to read it.
I will begin with our recommendation that the federal government reinstate local navigation channel dredging funding in the federal budget in order to provide adequate long-term funding for a local navigation channel dredging program in the Fraser River.
I believe, Mr. Chairman, you have all received a map that shows the Fraser River as it comes down through the metropolitan Vancouver area. I have it behind me as well. We will leave that for people to look at, at their leisure.
The Fraser River is the largest river in British Columbia, some 1,400 kilometres long. It actually drains one-quarter of the area of the province. As a result, there are deposits of 32 million cubic metres of sediment, and 10% of that is deposited in the lower Fraser region.
We used to have 20 feet of water in our harbour and along our side channels. That was at low tide. Today we have two to three feet of water at low tide. We're having a very difficult time trying to resolve this issue. Without continued dredging, the key deep-sea shipping and navigational channels will be too shallow for commercial and domestic vessels to safely access our ports.
Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, for more than 100 years river maintenance has been the responsibility of, and in fact funded by, the federal government--namely, Public Works and Transport Canada. They maintained the deep-sea fishing and shipping channels and the domestic and local channels for the fishing industry, tugs, barges, commerce, and pleasure craft. They all use these channels.
In 1990 Transport Canada diverted water from the side channels in order to increase the heavier flow into the main channel to continue to flush the main channel. As a result, the side channels were silted in to a very large extent, and this continues.
We have had 10 years of accumulation, in the amount of about 1.2 million cubic metres, which needs to be removed in order to save our side channels. We need your help. There is no longer scheduled dredging to maintain the Fraser River channels. Port Metro Vancouver dredges the main channel only. Port Metro Vancouver has completed studies that indicate that to restore the channel to pre-1998 conditions it will cost $5 million, plus $500,000 annually to sustain it on a long-term basis.
Port Metro Vancouver has given my colleagues from Ladner $125,000. This is the Ladner harbour sediment study, which is to give them other tools in order to look at dredging to reduce the buildup of silt. They are high and dry in their homes along the channels most of the time.
You will hear from them later, Mr. Chairman.
We have been declared by Fisheries as a core harbour. Of the 1,170 small harbours, 750 are core harbours along the coast, and we are one of them. We do have very large economic impacts, as you can see from the notes we've given you.
Once again, just to recap, we recommend that the federal government reinstate funding for local navigation channel dredging into the federal budget in order to provide adequate long-term funding for a local navigation channel dredging program in the Fraser River. You can see the affected areas in purple on your map.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.