Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will start.
We are delighted to be here today and to have this opportunity.
I am chairman of the Shipbuilding Association of Canada. Peter is the full-time president. The position of the association is also the position my company supports, but I will talk as the chairman of the association.
Shipbuilding in Canada is in a transition state. If you go back to the mid to late eighties and early nineties, we had a program of rationalization whereby the government in fact paid many shipyards, east to west, to get out of the business. There were too many people in it.
Today we are going through another form of rationalization. We have the national shipbuilding procurement strategy, which in effect will create two centres of excellence, one for large combatant ships and one for large non-combatant ships for both the navy and the coast guard. This strategy will be vital for the continuation of shipbuilding in this country.
The question that arises, as there will be only two selected, is what will happen to the remaining shipyards. There are probably about 116 vessels, which will be outside the centre of excellence, available to the rest of the industry. We have one thing we can do to encourage commercial shipbuilding in the country for small ships.
At this time, I would pass to Mr. Cairns, who is going to outline the proposal.