Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House of Commons to advocate again for the city of Windsor and for our border crossing.
More than a year ago the government created a plan with the province of Ontario, and announced $300 million in funding. Then later on it came in with a 60-day committee. It took the committee longer than a year to present what it called a nine point plan.
My question of the day relates to the fact that right now the city of Windsor has a gateway action plan, but it has a problem. Approximately 9,000 hazardous material trucks illegally cross the border each year, breaking both Canadian and U.S. laws. This statistical information came from the province of Ontario. Despite the security risk, the industry and finance ministers did not seem to care about that.
We have a crossing for hazardous materials in the city of Windsor. It is the Windsor-Detroit truck ferry which is pre-authorized. It is the only crossing in Canada where the data on the materials is gathered before the vehicles are loaded on the ferry and then sent across. In fact this ferry service received a grant from Tom Ridge, under the homeland security act, because of its operations. There were 14 years without problems.
What is happening is many of these hazardous material trucks are crossing over the Ambassador Bridge, breaking U.S. laws. This government has entirely left the ferry service out of our current border crossing plan, despite the fact that it could be the quickest, the cheapest and, most important, the safest for certain types of materials that are crossing the border.
Recently we had the explosion of a gasoline truck on I-75 in Detroit, Michigan. This could happen on the Ambassador Bridge as well. There is no security. The trucks drive straight on and anything could happen.
The frustration in my community comes from the fact that there are consensus items about the nine point plan that the government has put in place, but it has not done anything with them. One is a pre-staging area where trucks would go to a certain area to be staged and marshalled through. The second is the ferry service. As well, there are pedestrian crosswalks and a number of other things.
Unfortunately, we had a recent tragedy where a resident was killed on Heron Church Road. Despite the fact that we have had this advocacy for our community about the contentious plan, the government will not move on the items of consensus which I have noted.
Interestingly enough, the Minister of Industry came before the industry committee to testify. He said that the plan was a package. He said that the government could not do the pre-authorized staging area beforehand or anything else because it all happened at once and nothing was moving on the file until they met with the new provincial ministers and there was a municipal election.
Just last week the Minister for International Cooperation, the member for Essex, said that there was actually movement on the plan and that things were happening. We do not know in our community from where the leadership is coming.
I want to know why the government is allowing us to break U.S. laws and threatening the residents of my community by the fact that these hazardous material trucks are on the streets and crossing illegally. The government is not providing sufficient funds to get the trucks to cross at the designated crossing.
Why can we not move on items of consensus? Today it has been reported that since 9/11 the border crossing has cost this area $100 million.