Mr. Chair, as the hon. member has indicated, Port Metro Vancouver is absolutely critical to Canada's Asia-Pacific gateway. We have invested heavily in the Asia-Pacific gateway and it has been a great success. As we open up more markets through our unprecedented free trade deals, as we continue to responsibly develop our vast resources, we need to have a way to move these resources to that market and the Asia-Pacific gateway has been a stellar success.
Port Metro Vancouver is an important part of it. The port handled $172 billion worth of cargo in 2013, a total number of jobs 100,000, with 38 million metric tonnes of coal or 40% of the total black cargo in 2013. These are all important things.
The specific question with respect to the trucks and the containers is one that is of great importance to us. It all commenced in February of this year with a protest that started on port property. We acted very quickly. We appointed Vince Ready to ensure that an independent review that was directed at resolving the concerns of truckers and stakeholders was undertaken.
We joined with the Province of British Columbia and Port Metro Vancouver soon after that to announce our action plan. An agreement on that action plan was reached between the governments of Canada and B.C., Port Metro Vancouver, and members of the United Truckers Association and Unifor in order to end that work disruption at Port Metro Vancouver in order to get to full operation. The port is at full operation.
Almost immediately the steering committee started meeting in order to ensure that the joint action plan was carried out. Meetings have been continuing on a weekly basis ever since. The obligations the federal government said it would undertake in this joint action plan have been carried out or are in the process of being carried out as we speak.
Most importantly, on May 2 of this year I announced with the Province of B.C. and Port Metro Vancouver joint funding for an expedited initiative to outfit the remainder of the container truck fleet approved to serve port terminals as part of Metro Vancouver's truck licensing system with GPS technology. This is the kind of implementation that is expedited and needed because it represents one point of the progress in the joint action plan.
We will continue to work. I will be meeting with Minister Stone on the topic. We have all hands on deck when it comes to ensuring that we have full service and full accessibility at Port Metro Vancouver. We will continue to be seized with the issue.