Economic

Seven agencies, including the Canadian and American federal departments of transport, collaborated on the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway Study, an examination of the future of the waterway published in 2007. The study concludes that commercial activity related to the seaway generates more than $4.3 billion in personal income annually, $3.4 billion in transportation business revenues and $1.3 billion in taxes for provincial, state and municipal governments.

Canada’s Great Lakes shipping industry employs about 5,000 men and women, about one-third of them from Newfoundland or other parts of Atlantic Canada. But many other businesses rely wholly or partly on servicing the shipping companies. These include ship repair firms, terminal companies that receive cargo at ports throughout the Great Lakes and chandlers who keep vessels stocked with food and fresh linens.

The Great Lakes shipping industry has also provided an efficient, low-cost method of moving Prairie grain to world markets and it has played the same role for steel producers by moving iron ore from the lower St. Lawrence to plants in Hamilton, Nanticoke and elsewhere.