I know the $20 million that was due to sunset this year now is part of the A-base only. It seems we're doing things on an annual basis, and I understand that's the budgetary process. But in my riding, as an example, I may have a major harbour with 150 boats that will need constant improvements, where others are small repair, group repair--maintenance jobs, we call them.
Say I'm looking at a harbour that needs a $3 million or $4 million project. If I go to the minister I don't expect for a second that I'm going to have that done in this particular fiscal year, for the simple reason of fiscal restraint. So I would say to the minister, maybe if we're around, we'd look for it three or four years out, and we'd do so much a year for three years. And then when I sit down with that harbour authority it's not this constant struggle to make sure we're going to get some extra funding a couple of months down the road.
Is it possible, even in your discussions, to look at something where we could say we're going to do this over a three-year period? Is that possible the way the budget is set up now? Can we do that? Because I know it would certainly alleviate some of the concerns that some of the harbour authorities have in my riding if I could get commitments from the department that we were willing to do this.