Mr. Speaker, although I cannot speak on behalf of the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore, I can speak to my own experience.
In my region, as the parliamentary secretary rightly pointed out, harbour authorities are non-divested. We have a harbour commission which is a divested authority and so perhaps there was some language around this that is a little different from what was stated by the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore.
When we are talking about divested in our area, a harbour commission, I think that one of the challenges that we have faced, which is where the financial resources becomes a factor, is that for the ongoing normal operation and maintenance, often the local authority, the local commission can do the fundraising and generate the revenue.
More problematic is where we have these huge capital projects and it is very difficult for smaller municipalities and non-profits to actually raise those kinds of funds. For example, we had to look at an enormous upgrade to one of the breakwaters in one of our harbours. The problem with it was that it was simply beyond the financial capability of the local municipal authority to raise that kind of funding.
In my view, the kind of partnering that would happen would include some recognition. There is some infrastructure money, but that often falls in line with a whole bunch of other municipal projects, so there needs to be a specifically allocated pot of capital that small craft harbours, that are divested, could access for some of those larger capital projects. In my view, that would make them much more viable.
This should include all the accountability measures that we all recognize are really important around the expenditure of government funds, but that kind of partnering would actually make these harbours much more viable.