Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to put a question to the parliamentary secretary which I think raises real questions about the gap between commitments made on the eve of elections and the actual delivery.
I speak specifically with respect to my own riding about the virtual Liberal rally held on the eve of the last election, announcing with great fanfare a commitment of $115 million to assist ports and port facilities with security enhancements.
The issue of security in our ports is a very serious one. Halifax is the third largest port in the country. In good faith, the port authority submitted a proposal for I think $1.2 million in expenditures from that $115 million. It ended up with a tiny portion of that, about one-fifth of what was needed, about $220,000.
It was not just the port authority that was very distressed, but the two terminal operators, Halterm and Ceres, and Scotia Terminals, and other stakeholders who have ended up saying, “What happened to the commitment that we needed to move urgently to make our ports more secure, and specifically, what happened to the rest of that $115 million?”
I wonder if the parliamentary secretary can indicate if that is going to be announced again on the eve of another election, or can we expect it to finally come through to actually deal with the real security threats to our ports that need to be addressed?