Thank you very much to all of the witnesses.
I want to start off by saying to each of you that you're all experts in your field. You're given five minutes to present here tonight, and we each get five minutes of questions to you, including answers. It's a bit jammed.
One of my colleagues on the committee was saying that many of these issues have been studied many times over the years, but in this particular Parliament, for many of the 308 elected members who are now representing Canadians, it is the first time they are dealing with these issues. So to truly represent their constituents...we feel there is so much jammed into this bill.
Tonight, of course, we're dealing with the Coasting Trade Act and offshore seismic surveys, food inspection, Investment Canada, the Food and Drugs Act, the Seeds Act, and of course we've been dealing with many other topics over the last few days.
I regret that we're not able to fully examine each of the areas in which you have expertise, but we do appreciate you being here this evening.
I'd like to begin with Mr. Steiner and your comments. We've heard from Dr. Zedel regarding offshore seismic surveys, and Mr. Steiner, you talked about the Deepwater Horizon and the inadequate regulation that ultimately led to a climate disaster and a disaster for the U.S. economy, and certainly for the environment and for the people who were affected.
Can you give us a sense of the economic impact of that disaster? What kind of regulatory action did the U.S. government take to try to prevent a similar disaster from happening again?