Thank you very much.
Madam Chair and standing committee, I'd like to thank the committee for hearing us today, as we speak on behalf of our chamber membership on the trade corridor and related transportation issues in Niagara.
I can say unequivocally that maintaining a vibrant and seamless trading hub through the peninsula corridor remains a top concern and priority for our 2,000 members. Many rely on this corridor for their trade livelihood, and it's of paramount importance that we face impending issues on this critical route. It is clear that the federal government can play a key role in many ways.
Of top concern is the continually congested QEW corridor from Hamilton to the U.S. bridge border crossings in Niagara Falls and Fort Erie. A true Canadian Niagara trade corridor strategy will have to deal with the congested Niagara international bridges by providing appropriate infrastructure and systemic border crossing improvements to reduce mounting delay times at the border.
Even more critically, a mid-peninsula highway is needed to address gridlock from the QEW and move commercial traffic and trade in a proven, viable connection, to connect Buffalo to Hamilton, Hamilton airport, and major centres in southwestern Ontario through to Windsor and Sarnia.
Years have been spent tweaking and perfecting environmentally sensitive, relatively inexpensive, and effective highway corridors. It's time to make the move. Following the appropriate environmental assessments that are now under way, we encourage the federal government to work with the province and other stakeholders to help make this link a reality as soon as possible and to ensure that our chronic corridor vehicle congestion along the QEW is lightened.
Indeed, much of our transportation now depends on seamless, fast links between different types of transportation. It is here that Niagara excels in potential, with inexpensive and appropriate lands that can be leveraged to smooth a way to sensible development and transportation links to rail, tidewater access, and other connections. This may include new rail links to development lands. We urge the federal government to use its mandates, leverage, and financial backing to help make this happen.
Welland Canal's shores have also been in development limbo—if you want to call it that—along dozens of kilometres of prime industrial and employment growth lands. This must change. It is here that Transport Canada can play a key role in sensitively opening up those areas and connecting them appropriately to trade transportation routes as part of a more robust industrial hub.
Rail, water, trucking, and related connections must be made more open, seamless, and functional for our future economic security and prosperity. Dormant, developable industrial lands along the Welland Canal are also no longer acceptable if we're to entrench the region in a foreign trade zone in a way that will be robust and credible for decades to come.
In these ways, Niagara's future as a trade corridor of national importance can be secured. Our chamber members can then do business in a future that will bolster their success and potentially add thousands of new jobs.
Thank you for your time.