Mr. Speaker, in my colleague's questions he is right when he says that we face some challenges in coming up with that kind of money, but in fact, as he anticipated, with regard to the $20 million that was part of the funding that was supposed to sunset, the government took a look at that and saw that it was going to put us in a much more difficult position. We were going to go behind, as he said.
Our government turned that into A-base funding to make sure that it would be part of our regular commitment. In addition to that, if he will recall, the department and the minister also committed to looking at all other means within their existing envelopes of funding to see where they could come up with additional funding that could go toward the needs of small craft harbours, so clearly we are committed to that.
In terms of the big number, I do not know that I could break it down any more than he could. We know from the 2006 study done a couple of years ago that it might take as much as $400 million. There have been various calculations done to figure out what it might take in today's dollars to do that same amount of work and what additional deterioration might have taken place since that study was done. On top of that, there are the funds that would be required for divestiture, new initiatives and perhaps expansion of some harbours, which some harbour authorities tell us is required based on the larger ship sizes today. There are all of those factors.
We do not know what the number would be. In fact, I think one of the important things we need to do, which both the committee and the minister and his department should be looking into, is to figure out in real terms, in 2008 dollars, what it is we are looking at in actual amounts.