Mr. Chair, the Champlain Bridge and the new bridge for the St. Lawrence is the only instance in Canada where the federal government owns a bridge that is located within a province—an intraprovincial bridge. Given the fact that normally an infrastructure of this type would belong to the provincial government, we want to ensure in this case that in building the bridge and in accelerating the construction of the bridge, we do have the authority and control over the bridge so that we can go ahead without any delays, given that we want to have a new bridge in operation in 2018.
On May 13th, 2014. See this statement in context.