Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome to you, Minister, and to your esteemed officials. It's great to have you here. It's too bad that our friend and colleague Mr. Cummins, couldn't be here to liven things up a little bit as well, but I'm sure he'll be back.
But to try to liven things up a little bit, Mr. Minister, I will not direct this question to you, but to your deputy minister.
This committee has been engaged in a serious study on vessel safety and DFO's boat length requirements. We had expert witnesses appear from DFO as well as from Transport Canada on that topic. At the time, we heard testimony that basically there were two separate issues, and while there was some collaboration between Transport Canada and DFO, largely they were not necessarily linked or related and the two departments were acting independently. That was generally the consensus of the testimony that was given. Nine days later we understood, as a result of hearing expert testimony from industry stakeholders in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, that the night before there had been a memorandum of understanding signed between Transport Canada and DFO to collaborate on vessel safety and boat length requirements.
Do you think it was appropriate, Mr. Murray, that this parliamentary committee was not informed that the memorandum of understanding was being drafted or being considered and that its draft contents were not divulged to parliamentary members?