I would agree with you strongly. I think harbours development should be based on good, rational principles of cost and benefits and less involvement of government, as our report hinted and suggested, and we talked about local ownership, whereas today the federal government owns it.
I would strongly encourage local ownership and operation with a clearly defined process that spans a number of years on funding primarily capital developments. Whether that's done through the federal government or at a provincial level, it needs to be somehow broken away from a yearly cycle of appropriations where the poor small craft harbour manager doesn't know what money he's getting at the end of the year. He doesn't know what the long-term funding might be, so how can he make good decisions on the long-term viability of any harbour? That could be changed at a central level.
I would agree with your statement on depoliticizing it.