I had a chance to fly over and walk not too far from the graving dock, so I had a chance to see it. Believe it or not, I asked the same question: why graving? My folks will help me, but if I remember, it has to do with scraping barnacles. Yes, that's exactly what it is. I didn't dare say it, but that's what I saw, in getting confirmation. That's the terminology now. Today, that's not what they do solely--it's about refitting a ship and doing other work; but originally it had to do with removing the barnacles. That's the first thing.
The second thing about the graving dock is that it's an important piece of equipment on the west coast for la réfection des navires, notamment. It was quite clear, when I was there, that there is demand for that dock. That capacity is there.
The issue with the graving dock has to do with the fee structure, which hopefully you're going to be discussing. It has been a little too low in the past. Over the last two years we've been consulting with the industry. There's a consensus now that it would be fair to put the fee structure at a higher level--at a reasonable high level--so that there is not a deficit, which, by the way, Public Works used to mop up every year. It was around $5 million.
We want to be able to correct that deficit. And it has a magical effect, because the graving dock used to be on what we call our divestiture list of assets. Think about it: divestiture, letting go. The fact that it was on that list was preventing recapitalization by the private sector. So the two kind of go together.
Briefly, it's now off the divestiture list, so it is an asset of the federal government. Now that the private sector sees that it may not be let go to I don't know who, creating equilibrium on the fee structure will ensure that it's operated correctly. Then there will be, as well, an appetite for recapitalization, in an ongoing fashion, of that graving dock for the long-term sustainability of that piece of equipment.
That's the logic behind the user fee increase. We went at it for two years of dialogue with the industry. Unless I'm told otherwise, there's good support for moving ahead with that fee structure, because they see in this long-term sustainability for the west coast as it relates to fixing ships when they need to be fixed.