It is red for Fisheries and Oceans Canada and for Transport Canada. As far as I'm concerned, it should be for everyone. A wharf is a red flag. I am convinced all it would take would be to force them to sit down around a table and define the needs. We're talking about senior people, but on our side, we hold discussions with regular people. On the Pointe-au-Renard wharves, we had to use a great deal of internal creativity. We came up with plans.
Moreover, we noticed that the harbour authority, DFO officials and PWGSC officials had the tools they needed to sell the idea to politicians, and it worked very well.
If you want to work on wharf-related projects throughout Quebec, you have no other choice that is the only way to go. Indeed, we cannot ask ministers to repair our wharves; it is as though they're operating in a vacuum. Even if we were to refer everything to the wharf manager, we know that he won't do the job either. When it comes to the money for the plans and specifications, he will say that he doesn't have it because PWGSC no longer dares to pay; it's too expensive.
Now at the DFO, they refer to regional, local and provincial managers, not to engineers and technicians. In my opinion that is also one of the buttons we should be pushing. If we want to rebuild, we need to know what we're going to be rebuilding and what state the facilities are in.
It's true: I inspected the La Malbaie wharf eight years ago. A small part of the spur wharf was demolished and that wharf was expected to last four years at most.