Thank you all again for your important testimony.
I live in Port Alberni, British Columbia. There's been no government program to build a dry dock. Transport Canada doesn't have a program in existence. The port authority there has been trying to build a dry dock, and they have the only deep-sea port on the west coast of Vancouver Island. We have a great company called Canadian Maritime Engineering. They have all the ingredients to take on this work.
I was at the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region conference, and we heard loud and clear that there's very little to no dry dock space between Oregon and Alaska. Companies are even booking dry dock space, even though it's not going to be utilized, just to reserve it, to make sure they have a space available to them.
I really appreciate Ms. Sloan talking about having a shipbuilding czar because clearly Transport Canada isn't talking to procurement. We heard from the PBO that shipbuilding costs are really high because of the lack of shipbuilding in Canada, and that there were a lot of shipbuilding capabilities lost over the last few decades.
I'd love to get your take on it. I know that B.C. Ferries wrote a letter in support of our floating dry dock, saying that they're going to make three and a half to four billion dollars' worth of infrastructure and new vessel purchases within the next 12 years, and they're spending $150 million in annual ship repair. They said that the biggest constraint is the scarcity of dry dock space.
These other yards actually impact the bigger yards, as you know, in terms of capacity.
Ms. Sloan, would you speak a little bit to that and what other countries are doing in terms of their strategies? We're losing out to Poland and Turkey, as we know, and Norway has created a strategy where they're developing capacity even in rural coastal communities. We have the longest coastline in the world.
Can you speak about that? I'll let others chime in as well.