Thank you.
Thank you to my colleague for ceding some time.
Recently, the St. Lawrence Seaway announced that nearly 38 million tonnes of cargo transited the binational seaway in 2023. That's up 3.4%. That growth leads to jobs and job creation.
If you think about Niagara, we're within an eight-hour drive and we have the seaway and hundreds of millions of people within that area.
Mayor Steele, you talk of the need for collaboration. You referenced both HOPA and the St. Lawrence Seaway authority and how we can unleash the potential of Niagara. The national supply chain task force indicated that over a 50-year period, from 2020 to 2070, an investment of about $4.4 trillion is going to be needed. The majority of that, about $3.3 trillion, is going to be in the road structures.
There had been talk in Niagara for a long time of the need for a mid-peninsula corridor. It would tie nicely into the whole multimodal aspect of what's going on in terms of the investments and trade that happen in Niagara. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that.