Mr. Auclair, I'm one of the two members of Parliament for Thunder Bay. At one time, one of our claims to fame was the fact that we had the greatest number of grain elevators in the world. Much of the world—Europe and Africa—after the Second World War was fed by Canadian grain going through the port of Thunder Bay, but the nature of cargo has changed in recent years. There's less bulk and there are more things going by containers, yet the Thunder Bay port basically takes almost zero containers.
Now, it would seem to me that this is very low-lying fruit if we want to invest in our infrastructure and diversify trade. I certainly read the report of the Chamber of Marine Commerce, which makes a pretty good business case for the fact that we ought to have CBSA in some of these ports.
At the last meeting, the authors of that report were here, and we asked them questions. Afterwards, interestingly enough, we had Transport Canada here. We asked, “What do you think about their numbers?” They said they couldn't verify that economic analysis because they thought the data was incomplete.
However, having talked to the people who did the study, we know that Transport Canada didn't ask them to provide further data. Transport Canada did not indicate that they were going to do their own economic analysis. You, in working with the seaway, are far more intimately involved with this than I am. Where is Transport Canada going with this? I can't figure it out.
I hope they are going somewhere with it. If what they want is the business case to put Customs facilities in various ports, how are they making that decision? They didn't seem to be accepting the Chamber of Marine Commerce study, and they didn't seem to be doing their own. What's your impression of how they are going to decide where to put these customs facilities?