Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for the question and I am proud that he is part Newfoundlander. If we did a research study throughout the House we might find that many more people are the descendants of people who came from Newfoundland or at least through Newfoundland.
There are two things we can do. First, we have not done a good job over the years of publicizing our positives. When we hear about Newfoundland it is often looked upon as the poor cousin. That is changing. Our job, the job of my colleagues across the House and my colleague from St. John's East and others, should be to talk about what we have, the positives of Newfoundland and Labrador. By doing so we would encourage more people to look upon it as a place to visit rather than wondering who would want to be stuck there.
The people who were in Gander during the September 11 events will tell us that they have never been treated so well in their lives. Somebody from St. John's referred to a person from New York who was walking up the waterfront as being stuck there all week. The person from New York said he was not stuck and that he had never seen such beauty and freedom in all his life.
We have to put more money into our infrastructure. One of our problems is that we are an island and getting there by air is expensive. We are held hostage by an Air Canada monopoly or by the ferry which should be looked upon as a permanent link. It should be an essential service. It should be an extension of the Trans-Canada Highway. We have to pay more to get to Newfoundland than any other province in the country. If we can solve some of those problems and put more money into our general infrastructure, we can be and eventually will be the Mecca of Canada.