Thank you very much, Madam Chair and members of the committee. Welcome to Niagara. It's very kind of you to choose Niagara. I live right down the road, so it's the shortest commute I've had in many years.
My name is Ian Hamilton. I'm the president and CEO of the Hamilton Port Authority. The port authority is one of 18 port authorities in the country. We act as a government enterprise with a mandate to facilitate trade and manage federal assets with the exercise of good stewardship.
We're the largest port in Ontario. We have 10 million tonnes of cargo, representing $2 billion in value, supporting supply chains in steelmaking, agri-food, construction materials, petrochemicals and manufacturing. Cargo that transits the Port of Hamilton supports $6 billion in economic activity and 38,000 jobs. We employ 2,100 people on our property, on 630 acres with 130 individual tenants.
Because we're here in Niagara today, I'll focus my comments more on the Hamilton-Niagara region. Our message is pretty clear. We at the Hamilton Port Authority truly believe in the potential of the Hamilton-Niagara region. Our vision is to see the region grow into a true Canadian gateway.
In order to achieve this we need to develop multimodal industrial hubs that really capture the value of the transportation assets, integrating multimodal assets both outside and inside of the region so that everything can create a conducive network. This includes marine, of course, but also rail, air and road. I think there's a real potential on the road side to develop a mid-peninsula highway here in the region. I'll talk a bit more about that later.
This region has all the right ingredients: proximity to the United States; an active, co-operative business community; world-class educational institutions; entrepreneurially minded government representatives at the local, provincial and federal level, certainly not least of whom is Vance Badawey; industrial land to develop; and a great base of transportation infrastructure.
The last few years in Hamilton, the accessibility of investment-ready brownfield and industrial land, supported by multimodal transportation infrastructure, has been critical to our success. In the last six years, we've attracted about $350 million in third party investments in the areas of agri-food, food processing, logistics and construction materials. We've built the Port of Hamilton into a true multimodal industrial hub. In recent years, up until this year, we've actually spent almost as much on rail infrastructure as we have on marine infrastructure to create that multimodal environment.
Our challenge now in Hamilton is that we don't have capacity any longer. We have more demand for multimodal-service industrial land than the port can provide, but we believe that the Niagara region can truly help to meet some of that demand while supporting growth in the seaway traffic, increasing trade and growing the local economy.
In achieving this vision, good partners like the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation are essential. In the Niagara region, the canal is vital to successfully developing a multimodal industrial hub. It needs to be efficient and reliable. The St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation truly delivers on that. HPA's strength is on the land development side, with expertise in this very specific market of port land development and transportation-intensive industrial land. Our two organizations complement each other very much. We share objectives of facilitating trade, maximizing the use of the marine mode, and moving more and more cargo through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River.
The first step in developing a multimodal industrial hub in the Niagara-Hamilton region is the creation of a true trade gateway. It is to begin to integrate some of the transportation assets around the region and connect them to one another, both in Hamilton and elsewhere in southern Ontario. Currently, our transportation and marine-industrial land assets have fractured ownership, and many of them are underutilized. We see this as a place where the Hamilton port could bring real value by being able to integrate the various assets, invest in them and maximize the transportation infrastructure, ensuring that businesses looking for space have it and can grow.
Through the seaway review and the ports modernization review, Transport Canada has been seeking ideas about what policy or legislative changes can make the system work better. Our feedback is included, as well as several recommendations, such as ensuring that port authorities have the ability to partner with one another, and with municipalities and other entities, to acquire, lease and manage land as part of the effort to create an integrated network. Another key point is ensuring that industrial lands, essential to supporting our economic growth, are protected.
Once employment lands are gone, unfortunately they're gone forever. As we see more and more, there's increased pressure from the residential developments and municipalities to encroach on these industrial properties, which are essential to facilitating our trade.
There are some other priorities on our minds. Many in this region, including us, strongly support the mid-peninsula highway initiative and would like to see the project revisited.
The way we see it, Niagara's future prospects are brighter than ever, but that means that better goods movement is required and it has to be given more attention. The mid-peninsula highway is an important piece of the puzzle in ensuring that Niagara fulfils its potential as a true Canadian gateway.
I focus today on Niagara, but this approach to building networks of integrated assets is the right approach throughout southern Ontario, and essentially all of the country. We need to look to the future and how we are going to support the industries that are the biggest job creators, preserve the space we require for industry in the face of an ever-intensifying urban development, and make sure that the use of marine for its ability to counter congestion and reduce greenhouse gases is truly exploited.
We, at the Hamilton Port Authority, want to be part of what we see as an exciting future for economic development, trade and sustainable transportation in southern Ontario, and we believe we have a lot to offer. We are ready, experienced and motivated, and we look forward to working with you.
Thank you.