Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the witnesses.
You probably noticed I have just been subbed into the committee. I'm a long way from a harbour. My riding is almost in the dead centre of Canada. Just a few kilometres outside of it is actually the dead centre of Canada. In my riding of Kenora we do have lots of infrastructure that at one time was under DFO control, but it's probably part of a lot of the facilities that have been gotten rid of or deleted.
My colleague asked a couple of questions about core harbours, non-core harbours. I wrote down an east coast example, but the west coast is similar. Of 557 harbours, now there are 284 core facilities on the east coast.
We know you're under budget challenges and so on, when decisions are made and when you take an existing facility out of a category like being a harbour you support, or a core harbour.... I think you said now there are 322 on the east coast and 284 are core, meaning that the rest of them will be gotten rid of or removed from that. I'm not sure what term you want to use.
How are those decisions made? When you have a harbour situation that's not going to fit into your core categories, your core business plans, or whatever you want, how is that decision arrived at? Is it arrived at with the communities?
If I were a small town and facing something being removed, can you tell me how you would bring about that discussion on either coast?