Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's question is a good one. I absolutely agree that the border is critical. The border has again become an impediment to trade with the United States. It had faded as an impediment for many years and after 9/11 it resurfaced as an impediment.
In my view, there are two things we need to do. One is to strive to improve our competitiveness in terms of Canadian industry. I saw that in softwood lumber, where we were punished by 27% duties by American protectionists. Nevertheless, the industry hunkered down, made investments in technology and improved its efficiency. Today the forest industry has again become strong and healthy in spite of those protectionist actions.
I think the hon. member would have to agree that the improvement of efficiencies at the border will take a while. Some of those improvements have begun, but there will be more to come.
There is an awful lot going on with the smart border initiative, as the member knows. A lot of it will involve technology. It will involve working through some of the nuances of getting along with the American and Canadian border officials, who do not operate in quite the same way and do not have quite the same culture. We need to make some infrastructural investments to ensure we have preclearance facilities, for example, in some transportation corridors where we have some bottlenecks.
We have a lot of work to do. We have made some progress and we will make more in the next year or two.