Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your question, Mr. Badawey. A lot of what you've asked about is in the report you referenced last week, which was done by the committee in 2019. There's a lot in there that's certainly worth looking at.
I'll speak to a couple of areas.
On financial flexibility, certainly, as you noted, there are borrowing limits that were set decades ago, and ports are dealing with amending those. It involves amending letters patent, which can be a very time-consuming process. We would like to see that improved and sped up. Ideally, ports would be able to access capital in the ways that other providers of infrastructure are—such as airports, for example. I used to work with our nation's airports, and they work with lenders in terms of the normal criteria for risk that a private lender would look at.
The national trade corridors fund, I think, has been a fantastic program for Canada's port authorities. They have received about $880 million through that fund so far. It is allowing for those investments in capacity that Ms. Gladu has referenced. They are investing in innovation, including in virtual capacity. When we're processing containers more efficiently through border inspections using technology, for example, that's good for everybody. It's good for efficiency, for promoting smooth trade flows, but also in terms of the environmental side. Efficiency improvements are good on the environmental side as well.
There's another need at our ports, I'd say, and in particular at our smaller ports. They need to make investments just in maintaining their critical infrastructure, and certainly the NTCF has a role to play there, either through continued NTC funding—which as a program we would like to see be made permanent—or, alternatively, through a special fund to promote those investments in ongoing maintenance that smaller ports need but that they may not be able to fund through their own revenues, for example.