Great, thanks.
In terms of your comments about the Fisheries Act, I would like to set your mind at ease. I am also on the fisheries committee and was heavily involved in the rewriting of the new Fisheries Act. A fellow I'm sure you all know, Ron Bonnett, president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, made the point of how absurd the old situation was, where a farmer dug a drainage ditch that automatically became fish habitat even though it wasn't there originally and when that drainage ditch grew in and he wanted to clean the ditch out, like in normal practices, he was subject to enforcement actions under the Fisheries Act, which was clearly ridiculous. Our new act has gotten rid of that. Our strong view is that instead of engaging in ineffective regulatory programing, we are making very direct investments as a government into remediating real issues.
We had people from Hamilton, from the Hamilton harbour area, at one of our meetings. They were asked directly if there was any inadequacy in federal funding—were there any cutbacks and so on?—for the Randle Reef project, which I'm sure you're all familiar with. The gentlemen were quite forthright and said no, we have lots of money from the federal government to do this.
Would you agree, Mr. Murphy, that directing funds to remediating real and pressing environmental issues is a wise use of government resources?