The 25% actually generated $118 million a year. That money could have been reinvested in Canada, in creating more capacity. That's what we see as New Democrats. When you remove a tariff, and you remove barriers for Canadian companies to go and develop boats overseas, we see that as a really important tariff that was in place but was removed, which opened the floodgates.
In terms of capacity, I went to the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region conference. They stated that there are about $3 billion in refits every year on the coast between Oregon and Alaska, including Washington and British Columbia, and they were near capacity. They needed more floating dry docks. The PBO identified that the cost of labour is extremely high and very competitive in the markets where they are developing large ships.
You talked about smaller shipyards. The federal government still doesn't have a program to develop floating dry docks. I live in Port Alberni. We have the only deep-sea port on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The federal government port authority and Canadian Marine Engineering, which is employing a lot of people, including a lot of indigenous people, can't get funding to build a floating dry dock. The demand is there.
Do you see a lack of cohesiveness in terms of interdepartmental pursuits of supporting infrastructure between Transport Canada and Public Services and Procurement Canada?