Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think not only is hunting and trapping and fishing the activity that our country was probably founded on, but it's also an activity today that people still use as their livelihood and are involved in. But, primarily, I think people use it as a recreational day. Certainly, most people do consume what they harvest, and I think that's good.
I get pretty excited listening to my three-year-old granddaughter, who, together with her five-year-old brother, get up in the wee hours of the morning and spend a couple of hours with their father in a blind, doing some pre-season scouting for white-tailed deer. What a wonderful time that is for the three of them, not only to spend time with each other, but also to learn about nature, to learn about wildlife, to learn about conservation and just to observe the beauty that we have here in Canada.
In my former life, prior to politics, which I'm still involved in—heavy construction and gravel—we own a bunch of properties. It's interesting, on the weekend that fishing begins in the province of Manitoba, and also on the first day of white-tailed deer hunting, we have a disproportionate number of employees who are sick and are unavailable for work.
It's an important part of many of my employees' lives, hunting and fishing. In fact, we have some gravel pits that we intentionally stock with rainbow trout and we make available to our employees for fishing. One of the big activities is ice fishing. I observed just last weekend my employees out on the ice with their shacks, with their tents, harvesting rainbow trout. I think it's an important part of our culture. Certainly in my riding it is. We also have a lineup of employees who try to get their dibs on our properties for black bear hunting and white-tailed deer hunting, and lay stake to the claim that they may have exclusive rights to hunt on those properties.
I think it's an important activity. I'm very pleased to support the bill. What I'm curious about is the same question that I asked the presenter of the bill. It's not a prescriptive act; it's going to be descriptive. It's going to be a national hunting, trapping and fishing heritage day. How do you think your organizations could use that day to promote the mandate and the vision that your organizations have?