Thank you.
First of all, Deputy Minister, as you're now the Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and your mother raised you and three others on a secretary's salary, she must have done one hell of a job for you. Give her our very best.
What we hear from people like Dr. Boris Worm is that fish stocks are on a rapid decline. We heard Wendy Watson-Wright the other day talk about the carbonization of our oceans and the fact that the crustaceans now are having difficulty getting calcium for their shells. We hear about overfishing. We hear about unregulated fishing. We hear about all kinds of nasty things happening out there. Then we hear at world trade talks that our employment insurance or our work on wharves may be considered subsidies on all of this.
I'll go back to my colleague, Mr. Kamp, who was talking about the value for it. We've heard what you said, but I guess there are no yardsticks. You indicated that sometimes those measurements can take years. If you do something now, you plant a seed, you may get the reward five years from now, but then most of us have changed and we've all moved on to other things.
I'm concerned about what we hear in the public realm from other sectors. We heard the other day from former senior officials, Mr. Applebaum and others, regarding their serious reservations about the NAFO discussions. So we have all these experts--scientists and other officials--saying that things aren't all that great out there and that we're not doing all that well. Yet we hear that part of your role, Madam Ridgeway, is to go out and reach compromises and consensus, and that hopefully we can get value for the money and be successful on some of this.
In my mind, and I guess for Canadian fishermen and their families, we need to hear a lot more of the successes and of where we're going forward, not necessarily backward, when we hear from various officials out there.