With pleasure, Mr. Chair.
As I've said, the port authorities are operating in a very dynamic and changing environment. There are a lot of factors that are affecting the demand on ports, certainly in terms of the trade agreements that are being signed but also with just the changes in global trade flows, with larger ships that will potentially be going through the Panama Canal, for example. As well, simply much larger ships are being put on the lines. The largest ship in the world right now is 18,000 TEUs. It's 33 metres wide and it draws 32 feet.
The ports have to be responding to these changes both in terms of volume and simply in terms of the size of the vessel that is coming in.
Currently, while we are able to meet the demand, ports are nearing capacity. So we start to see issues that occur and bottlenecks that occur if there are any kinds of surges. We saw that during the wintertime but we're also seeing that currently with labour disruptions on the west coast that are rerouting containers to Port Metro Vancouver and Prince Rupert. By virtue of those ports already nearing capacity, they are starting to have difficulty handling the extra load.
Because of these issues there is a tremendous need for additional investment in simple port infrastructure. The $5.3 billion that we identified with Transport Canada was a scan of port needs. That breaks down to about two-thirds for developmental needs and one-third for rehabilitation of existing port infrastructure.
The port of Halifax has some berth facings there that predate the Halifax explosion. It's probably time to change them.
Those are more difficult to develop a business case for. So, again, while the Building Canada fund has been enormously helpful, and we're grateful for it, there are a couple of issues with it. First, the $100-million threshold is extraordinarily high for most ports to achieve, and second, the ratio of funding still creates a big gap that the ports are forced to fill, and they're having difficulty in filling it.