I want to thank the member for his question.
You're very right to point out the importance of the trade links and the trucking that takes place on these ferries. The whole lower deck of these ferries, the centre of the lower deck, is full of trucks all the time. The disruption to the ferry service impacts business and trade and costs us jobs, effectively, when things go wrong, which is increasingly frequent with these aging ships. There's a significant cost to the Canadian economy in not having reliable ferries on the west coast serving Vancouver Island.
People are an important part of this. Vancouver Island is an enormous tourist destination. Many tourists go back and forth on the ferries. It's considered a real highlight to go back and forth on the ferries. It's a very good-value cruise ship type of experience, basically, without having to go on a cruise to Alaska. You can take the ferries over to Vancouver Island.
They are very busy. It's incredibly disruptive when people end up spending hours or half their day waiting for broken ferries to operate. Once there's a service disruption, the rest of that day and sometimes the next day will be disrupted as well, for both the trade and tourism sides. It's a big hit for the Canadian economy.