First of all, Madam, welcome to Ottawa.
As my colleagues indicated, your résumé is very impressive, and I congratulate you on that. I wish you the best of luck with DFO.
One of the concerns we have, of course, is getting information out to the fishermen in their communities in a timely fashion. I have three e-mails here that came to me in the last couple of days, and they're typical of what I get throughout the country on a regular basis.
Here's one from the Sportfishing Defence Alliance. It says that for 82 days now he's been waiting for one simple answer from a DFO official named Mr. LeBlanc. He hasn't gotten it yet, and he wants to know why.
Here's another one. Another gentleman in Victoria has been waiting for a long time on an answer regarding reinstating salmon enhancement programs—still no response, even though he's e-mailed, phoned, and the whole bit.
Here's another one that is quite disturbing, from the west coast troll fishery. It comes from Kathy Scarfo and Roy Alexander, who I'm sure Mr. Bevan would know. I'll just read it to you:
Last week, we were officially notified by the DFO negotiator on the Pacific Salmon Treaty that the U.S. had made an offer to eliminate our fishery for $16 million. DFO lead negotiator informed us that they intend to return with a counter proposal that while not completely eliminating us would result in enough fish for only 6 of our 168 licenses. While in principle, we disagree with the elimination of our fleet, we have been warned by your officials that if we did not accept the buy-out as proposed, they would continue to reduce and eliminate all access to fish from our licensed fleet and we would be left with nothing.
I just can't see why DFO would operate in a manner of that nature. What I would like to do is to give you these—I know you're new here—and ask that you or your officials when you have a chance could call these individuals and give them the answers they're looking for. This particular one is most urgent. They're asking for a meeting with some senior officials, if that's possible.
The reason I do that is because that is consistent with what we get across the country. They send e-mails, they phone, they go to meetings; all they're asking for are basic answers, and they can't get them. I'm hoping that while you're here, being new blood in the department, you could shake the department up a bit and make them understand that if the taxpayer is looking for a response to a question, even if it's not the answer they like, they should have it in a timely manner. Would you agree?