Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge discussions I have already had with the member for Windsor West. He is concerned about a number of the issues and he has obviously raised them today and has brought forward some solutions that we in fact are looking at.
On the western hemisphere travel initiative, for those who may not be familiar with it, an act was passed in Congress a couple of years ago that is going to require anybody entering into the United States to have a passport or an acceptable equivalent that will be acceptable to the United States government. It was actually our party, while in opposition, and the New Democrats, who continued to raise this as a concern of the last two years. The federal Liberals were not dealing with it at all.
We could see the impact coming. It is going to hit most severely those Americans who do not have passports. As a matter of fact, only about 22% of them do. Polling shows that they are reluctant to get passports. That means that they have another reason to stay at home rather than to cross the border into Canada, either on a short term trip or for longer business interests if they do not have a passport. That is going to have a negative effect on our economy.
The Conference Board of Canada has estimated some $7.7 million a day will be lost from coast to coast just because of that initiative. I was pleased to see the Prime Minister make this a priority in Cancun. It was one of the first announcements that came out when he met with the President. The President of course has to deal with the fact that Congress voted on this, but he is supportive of a solution.
I have been charged with working with the secretary of homeland security in the United States in terms of working on a solution. We want to come up with a solution and will work hard for it. The member for Windsor West mentioned a couple of different groups or individuals who could be brought into the equation and I say to him, by all means. To him and to others here in the House, the more people we can bring around the table to look at how we are going to solve this, the better.
He also mentioned the issue of the U.S. coast guard. The U.S. makes its own view in terms of how it is going to arm its vessels. We have been very clear with the United States that armed vessels are not allowed to cross into Canadian territory. The Americans are certainly going to be able to patrol their own particular areas, but that is not something that we in fact are doing on the Great Lakes with our marine capability there. We have made that also very clear to the Americans.