First off, lady and gentlemen, thank you for being here today. I appreciate your input.
I'll preface my comments before getting into my question with this. I'm going to try to gear towards the bigger picture. As many of you know, we're working on a transportation logistics strategy. What is falling out of that is a trade corridor strategy. I'm going to concentrate on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River as well as the southwestern Ontario region, as we're working on a strategy for trade corridors in that area.
I'm going to allow Mr. Hardie to take care of the west end of the country.
With that the Detroit River, the Great Lakes, and the St. Lawrence are all attaching themselves to a multimodal system. That system includes connections to air, Pearson and Munro, as well as connections to rail, CN and CP, and of course to road. It's in a binational manner because a lot of the product that we see leaving Niagara, Ontario, is actually crossing over the border and being taken by ship from ports in New York and across the eastern seaboard. If not, it's down the river into the Montreal area.
My question is twofold. One, and I'll be broader here, is what is your vision? What is your vision specifically for your industry? Second, what is your vision attaching that to the broader vision of the economy when it comes to multimodal transportation and allowing us as a nation to perform with a lot more strength on the global stage when it comes to the economy?
I'm going to open it up as the first question in a broader sense and then I'm going to ask a second question. I'll give you a heads up right now that the second question is to find more efficiencies to then be more competitive on the global stage with respect to transportation.
I ask because I don't have much of an understanding of what you guys do with respect to pilots on the Great Lakes versus captains and the differences between them. I know that most of the captains do end up leaving and going to be pilots. Why is there no push, no move afoot, to train captains to otherwise do what pilots do on the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River and, therefore, being that much more efficient?
I'll throw that open for all of you.