Thank you.
In the spirit of all of the motions going back and forth—motions and emotions—I would like to move the following:
That, given the importance of Canada’s trade corridors to the national economy and to add value to this Committee’s study of our major trade corridors, the Committee allocate up to two meetings to receive an update on the government’s National Trade Corridors Fund initiative.
This is important at this stage because among the questions that we raised when we were looking at the trade corridors was whether or not the investments themselves were strategic and whether or not all the people who should be contributing to the overall health, effectiveness and efficiency of our trade corridors were actually making coordinated strategic investments not just in money and building things but also in the planning side. An issue that I recognized out on the west coast, where one part of our study took place, is that we have many component parts. We have the rail. We have the ports. We have seaport, airport, land crossing, road network. They all act as component parts but not necessarily as complementary parts, especially when it comes to the planning and the implementation of some very expensive improvements.
Part of the necessity for this motion is to actually do the reality check and just see how strategic our investments have been and basically what problems we've been trying to solve and what the outlook is for solving them. That's the reason why I would like to move this motion and have some time allocated to this.