Mr. Speaker, I was quite interested to hear the Secretary of State for Rural Development speak about rural Canada. My riding of West Nova is very rural. On January 21 a severe storm affected five or six wharves along the coastline of Nova Scotia from Port Lorne down to Delaps Cove and areas in between. Because of the severe cuts the federal government had already done to the provinces and to various programs, these wharves were in a state of some disrepair and the storm severely damaged them.
I heard the secretary of state talk about supporting our rural communities. Would he be prepared to encourage the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to put the proper funding in place to repair the wharves, instead of just using the existing budget that is taking away from the ongoing repair that needs to be done? Would he encourage him to put in place some emergency relief by possibly taking some of the millions and millions of dollars wasted on the gun registry and putting it toward the repair of those wharves and, as my colleague mentioned, helping farmers? What does my hon. colleague think of that?