Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Saint John for a stimulating and vigorous speech. I would certainly like to associate myself with many of the points she made.
One of the key messages that I got from her speech was that we needed an economic stimulation package as part of the budget. A shipbuilding program is something we have advocated.
Could the member expand upon that in the context of the recent B.C. experiment to revitalize the shipbuilding industry there? We used to have 35,000 people working in the dry docks of the Vancouver Burrard shipyards and others. Now there are zero. However when the B.C. government needed four new ferries, rather than buy them from Singapore or Japan, it decided to revitalize its shipbuilding industry. Unfortunately it is still wearing that today because the four ferries that were built were prototypes. Even the first Model T built by Henry Ford surely cost more than the 100th one he built.
Could the member comment on whether the NDP government in British Columbia did the right thing by building ferries rather than buying them offshore?