Dan Muys

C-9 Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise again today to present another petition on behalf of Canadians opposed to government Bill, which they see as a threat to freedom of religion and freedom of expression. We have seen the consequences of that in other jurisdictions. The petitioners are calling upon the government to withdraw this legislation.

Hopefully, they're fast enough. minister Let me have a bit of a speculative question, just because we had thehere and I think he intimated that there may be a ports bill coming. I may be reading between the lines a bit, although I don't think that much. What would you like to see in that if you had your wish list?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My question is for Melford Atlantic. I was struck by a couple of figures you indicated in your opening statement. I think you said that east coast volumes had dropped from 7.3% to 2.8%. Why is that? What are the factors behind that?

Okay. You also talked about losing business to New York and New Jersey. New York City on its own has the same GDP as all of Canada. Obviously, it's massive. What can the Government of Canada be doing to help reverse this trend, in your view?

C-33 What about financial flexibility? That's something that your association has put out a report on. We heard from your members and from you, and Billseemed to really fall short on that. We heard that when we did our tour of the ports for that study back in March 2023. How urgent is that to move on? There are opportunities that can be seized upon, and a model that's 30 years old is not cutting [more]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the witnesses from all parts of the country who are here. Mr. Gooch, welcome back to the committee. You've been here many times. As you know, this committee studied large port infrastructure expansion projects a few years ago, and I think you provided some testimony towards that. There were 12 recommendations that came out of that, many of which you echo [more]

For Canadian shippers at a time of diversification.... Okay. Mr. Gooch, I want to read a quote from your association: Canada needs “streamlined project reviews” to make major infrastructure happen “much more quickly”. Where are we at today in terms of whether the federal processes that exist currently are an impediment to that happening and to slowing the modernization and expansion of ports?

What about the bleed to U.S. ports? Once volume is lost, it doesn't necessarily come back so easily. Are we structurally too slow? What streamlines and changes need to be made so that we're not seeing, as was just referenced in the opening statements, business going to New York, New Jersey or ports on the west coast, for example?

There were no audits specific to Driver Inc.

Just for context, what is the span of time for those figures?

You indicated that the right to audit is important to you. It's important, certainly, to all Canadians. I think you mentioned it, but I don't recall the number, so how many audits have been done in the past year? How many audits were done in previous years? Is there a need to ramp that up?