Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be engaged in this debate. My hon. colleague opposite gave me an indication that he wanted to be brief and he was looking for me to, how shall I put it, be like the leopard that could change it spots and perhaps follow his example in brevity.
On a bill of such great import, he wanted me to be brief and not illustrate the import of this bill. I am going to try to follow his example. Even my hon. colleague from Montreal says it is absolutely important for us to stake out a position on this and make sure that we elucidate it with the clarity that we would have on this bill.
I am going to try to do it. With all due respect to the parliamentary secretary, this bill, as I said, is extremely important, for a couple of reasons. One of them, of course, is that it falls into the great tradition of Liberal bills that have taken on another coat in this Parliament. It is one of the bills that our government, in its previous Parliament, put forward for consideration. I was pleased that the current government saw fit to emulate the example.
It came before the committee. In the committee, it received thorough discussion, and for the second reason. That second reason is that this is an important economic measure brought forth to ensure that the infrastructure of the ports system in Canada functions according to all of those means and all of those standards that we have come to label as purely Canadian, which are the following: first, transparent; second, efficient; third, building on all of the partnerships involved in ensuring that the ports system will be reflective of the infrastructure needs of this country; fourth, that it involve the people who are expert in the maintenance and in the running of these operations, according to the business models that we expect would pass the scrutiny of our own system, including the Auditor General; and fifth, it would ensure that the inefficiencies that might exist by virtue of the fact that smaller entities operating often in competition with each other are amalgamated into an environment and into an authority that can provide the services required not only by shippers, i.e. their main clients, but also by the macro needs of the country, and that is an efficient transportation system to get our goods and our services, but primarily our goods, to the foreign markets.
Members will recall that in the last Parliament we initiated a couple of gateways to the economic dynamics of Canada, an Atlantic gateway, a Pacific gateway and, as well, an internal Great Lakes gateway, a central Canada gateway. All of these required the appropriate measures to ensure that the port authorities could function as units, as economic business units capable of delivering an economic service and capable of surviving the operational challenges that come to operating a business that has to meet others' needs.
It was important for us, especially in the committee, to understand that the ebb and flow of business patterns does change, but that these ports would be prepared to ensure that those changes in the economic cycles and in the special economic needs would be reflected in their capacities.
The parliamentary secretary and I tried to find common ground on this, as we found with the critic for the Bloc. I always forget what the name of the riding is, but he will forgive me, I am sure. I cannot mention that it is Monsieur Laframboise, so I will try not to, but we tried to find a common ground and make positive recommendations on how to improve legislation, and we did do that.