Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for reinforcing what the official opposition will do. We will support this bill for exactly the reasons that he stated. This bill brings forward some very valuable initiatives in terms of establishing ports that are going to meet the international competition and gain the businesses that we all want to see come to Canada.
It was not that long ago, when my colleague from Thunder Bay and I were brand new members here, that Thunder Bay was one of the most important inland ports in all of North America. I think it was actually number two in all of Canada. I now see it way down at number 16 in a list of 19. I do not say that to reflect negatively on Thunder Bay, but to give the House and all of our viewers an opportunity to understand what has happened to the dynamics of transportation in this country.
A port like Thunder Bay, which was absolutely crucial to the movement of grains and minerals not only through the Great Lakes but out to the Atlantic and out to the Pacific, has lost its premier place to the various ports out west, and there are five of them. I am sure the people of Thunder Bay would want to ensure that their port would have access to the funds and new dynamics to revitalize a place that used to be booming even in slow times.
My colleague from the Yukon knows that it is not only important to build a port structure that is capable of handling renewed traffic, but we need to be able to get goods, whether by rail or by road, to the port in order to use the port for access to international markets.
One of the reasons we developed the concept of a Pacific gateway is that the Chinese, to use just one example, used to ask us why we bothered selling them our wheat or our minerals if we cannot get them out of the port of Vancouver, and we can, we cannot even get them to the port. We had to build an infrastructure network that would bring all of our commodities out of the centre of the continent, whether that be Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba, or northern Ontario, to one of the two gateways, the gateway out in the Pacific through an amalgamated port system in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia or Prince Rupert, or to revitalize the port structure in the Maritimes.
We missed a golden opportunity a few years ago to re-enhance the capacity of Halifax harbour to handle the giant ships that are coming on to the marketplace. We cannot miss too many of those opportunities. These kinds of initiatives would compel us to utilize some of our infrastructure moneys as well to feed a rail network and a road network to these places to stimulate growth and to develop an economy that goes beyond the minute minuscule economy and expand it to a regional and national one.