Thank you very much.
The first round—and it was over $1 billion—of Pacific gateway infrastructure funding was focused on smoothing out the supply chain, and working on the bottlenecks. I guess I would just have to say that we didn't have those bottlenecks and congestion problems in this corridor. Of the $1.2 billion in the first round—and I say the first round because we were hoping that there would be more rounds—there was only probably about $40 million that was spent in this entire corridor.
This next opportunity for Canada is all about trade, the export of our resource trade with Asia. There's a huge demand for our resources, but it also puts a huge demand on building the infrastructure I talked about in my presentation. Really, that's what I think the next round of investment should be focused on, building capacity on the west coast.
With that, I have to emphasize that the mine association and such isn't just about investments in Prince Rupert or Vancouver. It's really all about investing to enable. Whether it's a potash mine development in Saskatchewan, a coal mine in northern Alberta or B.C., or the grain fields of this land, it's all about providing the doorway and the capacity so that we can take advantage of the tremendous opportunity that is unfolding in Asia.
The investment should be placed to make sure that we have capacity at our doorway, to build the doorway larger, and build it more fluidly so that Canada can take advantage of trade opportunities, create jobs, prosperity, and opportunity right across the entire country. Actually I think it goes a long way to addressing what is being talked about right here, and this community is a good example. You build infrastructure that creates jobs and opportunities.
I would suggest that the economic gap here in this community has been improved dramatically by the fact that we have a container port and a bulk port that are growing. The level of jobs that have been created here in the last five years, on a ratio scale, has been absolutely tremendous, and it's all about that first initial strategic investment in the infrastructure.