Mr. Speaker, my question relates to the Pacific gateway strategy which is extremely important for the country and is very important for my province of British Columbia.
We have introduced about a $590 million investment to buttress up our transportation arteries and also moneys to improve security in our transportation arteries post 9/11. This ties in to the very important CAN-Trade initiative. That initiative will enable us to get the information from abroad for our private sector. One of the big challenges is how we link up market opportunities internationally and our private sector here, particularly for small and medium size businesses that are too small to have their own intelligence capabilities to find out what opportunities exist abroad.
CAN-Trade is an excellent initiative that will involve our embassies and high commissions and perhaps a living website. Our embassies and high commissions will be able to extract from the countries in which they are situated that information that is important in terms of ascertaining job and market opportunities abroad. That information would be posted on a living website which would enable our private sector to access that information in real time.
Given the fact that we have the CAN-Trade initiative as well as the important investment in the Pacific gateway strategy, I would like my hon. colleague to expand on this initiative that our government has put forth. It is critically important not just for a three to five year electoral cycle but to build our country for the next 20 to 30 years. We are not investing in a very short timeline. We are investing for the next 20 to 30 years to enable our country to evolve and capitalize on market opportunities abroad.