Welcome back, colleagues.
Once again, I want to welcome our witnesses.
We are the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, for those who may not have been around for the first round. We represent the four different political parties in the House of Commons.
Last fall we began a process of doing a study into the small craft harbours program for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. We presented an interim report to the House of Commons prior to the Christmas break, and we are in the process now of concluding our study and hopefully will be presenting a full report to the House of Commons before the summer break.
Part of that study last fall included hearing from people within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the regional directors of small craft harbours, the national advisory board of small craft harbours, and several other groups and organizations.
Our study continues this week. We are travelling to the four Atlantic provinces, and to Quebec this afternoon, to hear from you people who are on the ground, or on the wharf as we say, with regard to the harbour authorities themselves, the volunteers themselves.
Our process includes trying to create a foundation for the minister to take to his cabinet colleagues and others to enhance the financial side of the small craft harbours program, but also to find out from you about any concerns you have as you volunteer your time and effort in your communities, and about any assistance that harbour authorities themselves could have from the government.
We allow a few minutes for each presenter to introduce themselves and tell us a little bit about their operation. Then we open the floor up for questions. We operate on time limits here; otherwise we would end up going over our time. We ask that you take that into consideration while you're speaking.
As I said, our report will hopefully be concluded by the summer break. If, after today, you feel that you haven't had the opportunity to say everything you wanted to say, feel free to forward that to the committee, and we will include that as part of our discussions when we finalize our report.
Most of the members around the table represent rural ridings in Canada and are very familiar with the small craft harbours program and with harbour authorities themselves. I represent a rural riding in Newfoundland and Labrador, and I have 68 harbour authorities in my riding. That just gives you an example, and most members are the same. We are quite familiar with it, but at the same time, we have not made a stop yet where we have not learned something new.
We look forward to hearing from you this morning as you raise the issues and concerns that you may have.
I believe Mr. Landry will begin. The floor is yours, Mr. Landry.