Thank you, Mr. Badawey, for the question. I was also struck by that quotation you cited in the early part of the report.
As I said in my opening speech, the transport ministry is viewed by me as an economic portfolio. I believe, and I've said this often, that the economy of our country depends on three big things: one, the products and services we have to offer to the world; two, the treaties we have with other countries that enable us to exchange these products and services; and three, how well set-up our trade infrastructure and trade corridors are in efficiently getting our products and services to other countries. I definitely regard the trade-related infrastructure part of transportation as a critical component.
For example, we know our railway system ships about 280-billion dollars' worth of goods annually, at least in 2014. That's a very large amount. Can we make it more efficient? The port of Vancouver handles 140 million tonnes of goods. Can we make it more efficient? Can we make other ports more efficient? How efficient is our intermodal transport? How many bottlenecks do we have in the country that are unnecessarily slowing down the efficient movement of trade-related goods that we want to sell to other countries, especially in many cases across the border into the United States where we do a great deal of trade?
For me this is an extremely important element of my mandate. It is the economic side of the transport ministry. I mentioned in my opening remarks that we are going to consult during the spring and summer with key stakeholders to see how they react to the recommendations. There are some 60 recommendations in the Emerson report.
Transport is not just a federal jurisdiction. We work with provinces and territories. I am interested in hearing what they have to say, because the more we are in sync on transport issues in this country, the better it is for all of us.
I've already begun some consultations by meeting with the Secretary of Transportation in the United States as well as the Secretary for Homeland Security, because both security and transport are essential aspects of trade between Canada and the United States, and we do a great deal of trade with the U.S. by road, ship, and rail.
There will be a consultation process. In the fall what we anticipate to do is to decide the recommendations we will go forward with, those we will not go forward with, and those we may partially go forward with. Before we get to that point, we want to have this consultation process throughout the spring and summer.