It's quite astounding, that's for sure.
This is a point, as far as the cost to Canadians. For agricultural commodities to be grown on the prairies, it's been estimated that about 30% of costs are to transportation. By the time I grow it on my farm and get it to port, for every dollar, approximately 30% of that cost is towards transportation. That makes us less competitive.
When you start shutting down ports, I like your comparison to how many more kilometres.... That's one of our biggest disadvantages, especially in Manitoba. We're landlocked, so we're very reliant on exports to the U.S. We can get to Minnesota.
The other thing is that when we had the grain debacle in 2013-14, there have been some estimates that it cost the Canadian economy $7 billion. I don't know how you quantify that.
We're being asked how many more dollars we can generate out of that. There was the whole infrastructure.... Those were planned. Those are known railways. CN and CP basically ripped $7 billion out of our economy that year. We didn't need it at that point in time.
Those are the things to consider when we talk about port authorities and giving Canadians the opportunity to develop. We need that federal leadership.