Mr. Speaker, again I am pleased to ask some questions on this important bill. I expressed earlier that in Sault Ste. Marie, dead in the middle of three of the most important Great Lakes, Lake Superior to the north, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, we see ourselves as part of the great Canadian waterway, the St. Lawrence Seaway. We connect in a very important way. Goods from the west go east. We see ourselves as an entry point for goods that would go into the Midwest U.S., then go to literally millions of people and communities along Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
We are preparing ourselves to take advantage of what we know will be greater and greater focus on the distribution of goods, the transportation of goods and systems that make that happen. CN comes from western Canada north of the Sault. We have the Great Lakes, as I have said. We have highways, I-75 into the U.S. and the Trans-Canada highway. Therefore, we are strategically located in a very good position to take advantage of some of this, but we need to ensure that the public institutions we put in place to manage this, like our ports, are well managed and that we deal with all the issue.
However, one issue we are trying to deal with in the Sault, because we have responsibility for such a vast amount of water and land and trees, is the question of invasive species. Is there anything in the bill that speaks, from an environmental perspective, to the protection of our natural resources from species that might be brought in through the St. Lawrence Seaway and up into the Great Lakes. These might invade our natural habitat and create some of the problems we have seen already or make them worse?
We would like an invasive species centre placed in Sault Ste. Marie, which would research and come up with responses to some of that. However, is there anything in the bill that speaks to a this concern and then some action that could be taken to minimize or stop altogether the possibility that we might get invasive species into our waterways in Canada?