Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I certainly appreciate what I have heard so far today. We always hear something new everywhere we stop, and I've heard certainly some new information here.
I have an open-ended question. Feel free to answer if you want, and if you don't want to, that's fine as well.
Basically, the way I see it, you have potentially some opportunities for change in the future. If you're thinking long term, what would you like to see happen with regard to the funding formula for small craft harbours? Obviously there's the status quo.
We could continue with the status quo, which sees the funds being competed for, and essentially we have harbour authorities that are strained, basically playing the game or begging for money to try to keep their harbours, wharves, breakwaters, and whatever they're dredging up to par.
That's one option, I guess, looking forward. We could continue with the status quo and continue to add more money. There was $20 million a year already added to the small craft harbours budget, and we've added another $10 million over the next two years for part of the divestiture program. So we're continuing to add money, but we're not really changing the status quo as far as how the actual program is administered is concerned.
One option could be a regional harbour manager paid for by DFO. There would be a group of five or ten harbours, or whatever, in a region, and some of that money would actually pay for business management. Maybe there would be enough money to pay for a repair person or whatever. The harbour authorities could pool the money they get and put that money with some from DFO to help with that side of it. Or perhaps there's some new way of looking at this, an outside-of-the-box type of thing, a new funding formula.
For example, in the municipality I'm from, if they had a $20 million project they wanted to do, they would use a funding formula and a debenture to borrow over 50 years. They would generate enough revenue to pay for the borrowing over a 50-year period at a fixed interest rate, or whatever the case might be. That's the way it's structured or set up. It allows the municipality to leverage the money that they get today well into the future in order to make repairs that they need today.
I'm not saying that's what it has to look like, but I'm just giving that as an example. I'm just wondering if there is some way that we could do this better and get better value for money. Right now the annual budget--and it has fluctuated--is around $100 million a year. If you were to take a look at that and divide it on a per harbour basis, obviously some of it would go for administration, but $90 million divided by 750 core harbours across Canada is $120,000 each per year. If you're looking at it from that perspective, there has to be a better way of doing this.
So if somebody would like to throw in a comment, I'd like to hear it.