Welcome back.
I want to welcome our second set of witnesses. For those who may not have been here at the start of our last session, we are the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans for the Parliament of Canada. We're travelling in Atlantic Canada and Quebec over the next four to five days as part of an ongoing study we're doing into the small craft harbours program. Our purpose is to hear from harbour authorities--and in this case we have additional guests--and to hear the concerns you have with regard to funding for harbours, anything that may be required to assist you as volunteers on the harbour authorities, and any and all things that relate to the development of your harbours.
I realize we have people here from different harbour authorities. Perhaps you could expand on the harbour program in general, not necessarily mentioning your own harbour, because we're studying the whole small craft harbours program.
For the witnesses, the members of the committee are comprised of the four parties in Parliament: the Liberals, the Conservatives, the Bloc Québécois, and the NDP. Our purpose is to present a unified voice back to the House on ways to enhance the small craft harbours program. Most of the committee members have small craft harbours in their ridings and are quite familiar with the workings of them and with the concerns. Our goal is to try to find some of the issues out there and try to address them.
In addition, for the members of the committee, Mr. Pat Curran here is the executive director of the Irish Loop Development Board, which covers part of the southern shore at St. Mary's Bay; it's an area that has focused heavily on the fishery for many, many years. I just wanted to put a different flavour into the conversation, from the development board's point of view. The others are members of harbour authorities and they'll introduce themselves as they go along, I'm sure, and who they represent.
With that, I'd like to open the floor....
Mr. Simms has a housekeeping item he'd like to mention.