Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member for Victoria is confusing what bureaucracy and concrete measures for protecting Canadians are all about. When I was referring to the increased bureaucracy, I was referring to $35 million that the new Pacific gateway council is going to cost to actually re-study and re-coordinate work that has already been done by the B.C. government and a number of partners in reference to the ports. That is what I was referring to when I said there would be increased bureaucracy.
When it comes to ports police and even to an effective border strategy for protecting our borders, seeing that this is our front line of defence and protection for Canadians, we have been calling, first of all, for a significant border patrol in some of our remote areas. I believe some of our ports are no different. For potential problems, police and the RCMP could be up to an hour or an hour and a half away. This puts real pressure on our customs agents at our land border crossings in reacting to problems.
We have called on the government and said that there has to be a police force, whether we beef up the RCMP or look at an actual border patrol, to deal with protection and security at our borders. It is no different for our ports. I think the hon. member has to realize this. He cannot confuse this with more bureaucracy, which is really going into a vacuum when we look at that $35 million to pay for all these people on the council. Let us compare that to what that money could do if we actually were to put in a border patrol and bring in an aspect of it for our ports. I think Canadians would like to see that sort of security and protection. I do not think it is a duplication at all. If anything, having something like that in place would be a more effective way to patrol both our ports and our borders.