I respect this committee, because it's obviously loaded with commonsense people; I talked to most of you this morning. I think it's a great message to take to any senior level of government, and for that matter any junior level of government, because the same situations can happen at the lower level of government.
Unfortunately, the process for a small community that is a poor community.... We don't have any industrial taxation in our community, as an example, and most of the wharves or floats that we've created in our community have been created by local taxpayers. We have about 7,500 lineal feet of moorage at the present time, and we peak at more than 200 vessels at a time in a busy period.
There's a real need for us to continue to function. The private developer who has spent money building a long walkway to get out to deep water supplies fuel there, but he can't get permission to dredge; yet they've dredged in all sorts of other places. In downtown Vancouver there has been dredging going on there for the last few years in developing a conference centre; obviously there were no refusals there. But a tiny little place like ours, which can't afford to go to court or go to higher levels, or to Ottawa making pleas to the minister, just can't afford that kind of thing. We're being penalized in the meantime by someone who is taking a very narrow approach to their responsibilities and not using very much common sense.