Mr. Chair, I will be speaking for about 10 minutes and will be addressing my questions to the Minister of Transport and Internal Trade.
A lot of us have just been through a very energetic campaign. I do not think a year ago we would have been talking about internal trade in this chamber. I do not know if we would have been talking about national unity in the way we are in the estimates and in the platform we are putting together, which the Minister of Transport and Internal Trade referred to in her opening remarks.
I think it is really due to the awakening that happened first in November and then into the winter months with the threat to Canadian sovereignty. I really awoke to this in my campaigning and my canvassing in Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park. As I said in my maiden speech, we are an urban riding that is a little more than 16 square kilometres between the Humber River, Lake Ontario and the transmission lines and the train tracks in the west part of Toronto.
When we think of urban ridings, of people who are engaged in such a small space, there is often an assumption that they have very parochial urban concerns. Indeed, the people in my riding did have a lot of concerns that were very specific to their needs, around transportation, around poverty and around economic development.
There is more poverty in my riding than in other ridings. There are lots of different kinds of need, but across the demographic groups in the riding, whether it was in the Parkdale area, the Roncesvalles area, where I live, Liberty Village, which is full of young professionals, Bloor West Village, Swansea, the valley down by the Humber River, the Stock Yards area, Rockliffe-Smythe or the Junction, there was a common theme around putting some of our economic differences aside, putting some of our more parochial concerns aside and really taking the national interest.
There was a really specific interest in this idea that we needed to break down these internal trade barriers. Canadians really have to wake up to an issue to really land on something that can sometimes be a bit technical, that can be in the area of very specific professions or sectors, yet they awoke to it.
When the Prime Minister was talking about this need to break down internal trade barriers, and when our platform came out with this very strong commitment around having one Canadian economy and taking all federal actions necessary by July 1, people awoke to that. They asked me at the doors about that, and they actually contextualized it a bit more broadly. They said they wanted me to do that work because they are interested in what their fellow citizens in Alberta, the Maritimes, Quebec, B.C., the Prairies and the north, what other people in their economy and country, are experiencing.
People awoke to the fact that people in those provinces and people outside urban Ontario had something to offer and that we were stronger together. The thing that was attacking us meant we had to wake up to the need to, as the Minister of Transport and Internal Trade mentioned, find those things that were holding us back. They did not have that 7% figure on the tip of their tongues, but they knew there was something amiss.
I think it comes from a very deep part of our history in Canada, which is that when we have been our most ambitious, when we have been building nations, it is because we have been breaking down barriers. In fact, we have been using transportation systems in part to do that. Canada is an incredibly improbable country. Ninety-five per cent or so of our population lives within 100 miles of this U.S. border.
Growing up, I recall learning up about how New France, as it was called then, was settled with the seigneury, the very narrow strips of land, which is the way a lot of agriculture in Quebec is still organized. The St. Lawrence River was so important to the nation-building project then.
We learned about other waterways, such as the St. Lawrence Seaway, that were important for nation-building projects. I recommend that anyone who lives in an urban riding visit a waterway. For people in southern Ontario, it is actually quite close to check out the Welland Canal. It is an incredible piece of engineering that has opened trade routes that were previously unimaginable. There is the Trent-Severn Waterway. A whole number of nation-building projects based in transportation connect us together.
For those in an urban riding, the biggest piece of machinery they might see is a TTC train, a GO train or an UP Express train, but by going to the Trent-Severn Waterway or the Welland Canal, we can see the full might of Canadian industry on display. It is very important to see these and it is very inspiring.
Transportation has always been at the heart of nation-building projects. Of course, we have the legendary story of the Trans-Canada railway lines that we built that unified this country from east to west. We did make some mistakes along the way in doing that, but it was a vital nation-building project.
I was recently reading Team of Rivals, which is a book about Abraham Lincoln putting together a unity cabinet in the Civil War era. It is a fascinating book. It tells the story about the politics and the economic debates that were happening in the United States before the Civil War. One of the key issues that really divided Americans at the time was the issue of internal improvements, of how much to invest in harbours, light craft and waterways, and all those things that could connect regional economies to each other.
We did this work in Canada. The United States did that work throughout the 19th and 20th century. We continue to do it. It is a key way of uniting and defining us as a country that, again, we have this improbable country that is so close to the U.S. border.
More recently, I have been part of efforts that tried to create more of a national economy, in my earlier life as a policy director to two Ontario premiers. It is hard work.
The Minister of Transport and Internal Trade referred to the New West Partnership, a really important good idea, a Conservative idea primarily at the time, and one that Ontario tried to adopt in similar ways for its local circumstances.
There was a time when Ontario and Quebec had very aligned provincial governments and they really tried to make concerted efforts to align their economies, but it is hard work. It is hard people work. It is often hard engineering work. We would like to have more electricity cross between eastern Canada and western Canada, but finicky interties and all those things get in the way of really connecting our economies.
The human work is just as challenging. I will never forget a briefing when we had the the regional chair of the County of Brant. They were telling us how important their local economic development initiative was compared to that of the City of Brantford, which was within the region of Brant, and how they had to have their own external trade promotion efforts.
I think moments like what we have faced in the last six months have really awakened us to the fact that we have to start to bring some of these issues and initiatives together. What are the internal improvements of the 21st century? They are some of the major investments included in the estimates. I will point out the national trade corridors fund, with $826 million under the Minister of Transport and Internal Trade's portfolio.
I will point out the investments in ports. We have 17 major ports across Canada and the estimates refer to new ports in Montreal and the proposed new port of the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 in Vancouver. We also have the nation-building projects that were discussed in Saskatoon, which include rail, electricity and other projects that will be tackled there. We also have rules to tackle.
I am from New Brunswick so I cannot help but make a little tribute in this House to Gerard Comeau, who brought some of that Quebec beer across the border. He took his fight all the way to the Supreme Court and won. Thank God he did, because he awakened people in this House and elsewhere to the fact that, in my riding, I have High Park Brewery and Junction Craft Brewery. They may be great breweries, and they are great breweries, but do I need to be protected by my government from trying someone else in Canada's beer?
As a New Brunswicker, I truly believe that George Riordon's maple syrup in Pokeshaw is the best maple syrup. However, I am now an Ontarian. As long as it is maple syrup that is all that counts; just none of that table syrup on my pancakes. However, I do not want to be protected from Ontario or Quebec maple syrup. Vermont is another story.
This is hard work. I know there are lots of nation-building projects under the Minister of Transport and Internal Trade's portfolio and a lot of hard work to start to expand our imaginations. I look forward to talking about that more.
