The Continental Gateway was established following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Governments of Canada, Ontario and Qu_bec to develop, in partnership with the private and public sectors, a strategic, secure, sustainable and competitive multimodal transport system to support international trade. The purpose of this presentation is to provide the latest information on the Ontario?Qu_bec Continental Gateway and Trade Corridor planning process and to report some of the interesting findings that came out from the studies, working groups' activities and consultations with our partners on key issues of the transportation system. The Continental Gateway is part of a comprehensive Canadian planning exercise of gateways and trade corridors. Two other gateways and corridors have been established: Asia-Pacific and Atlantic. There are three elements that distinguish the Continental Gateway from the other two Canadian gateways: it provides direct access to major North American markets with over 135 million consumers in less than 1000 km; it is the main economic corridor of Canada supporting $560 billion of trade, accounting for almost three times the combined exchanges in value of the two other Canadian gateways; and the multimodal transportation system is integrated to the rest of North America and includes four modes along the St. Lawrence?Great Lakes Corridor which connect to the Continent heartland. This paper was originally published in French in the TAC 2010 conference proceedings as "La Porte continentale et le Corridor du commerce Ontario-Quebec (voir numero ITRD F160274) - translation provided by author. For the covering abstract of this conference see ITRD number E220308.
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