Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all of you for your important work and for being here today.
One thing I keep hearing about, obviously, is the skyrocketing cost due to inflation—cost of materials and labour—and labour shortages. My concern is that I don't think we're thinking outside the box as a nation, in terms of developing on federal lands—federal opportunities.
We have 18 Canadian ports. I live in Port Alberni. We have a port, and the Port Alberni Port Authority has been doing incredible work. It has been asking for the government to develop a dry-dock program, for example.
I was at the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region conference just four years ago. It cited that there is $3 billion of dry-dock work done annually, and it was absolutely short of dry-dock space at the time.
We look to countries like Norway, which has developed dry-dock space in small communities to build economic resiliency. In Port Alberni, there is this great company, Canadian Maritime Engineering, that's doing incredible work. It's working in partnership with the port to try to get a dry dock.
I just want to talk about the cost of living on the west coast. It costs $1.5 million now for the average home in Vancouver, over $1 million in Victoria and about $500,000 in Port Alberni. The wages you have to pay somebody to make their mortgage in Vancouver is absolutely through the roof.
Why are you not working collectively with Transport Canada in opening up opportunities so that we can reduce costs of shipbuilding in this country?