Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be here with the committee this morning.
I understand totally where you're coming from on the issues relating to the lobster fishery and the fishery in general. Our fishery back home in Newfoundland will start tomorrow, and the crab and shrimp fisheries are going to be in very similar circumstances this year. It's going to be a challenging year for all fishermen, whether it's lobster, crab, or shrimp.
There are a couple of questions that I'd like to pose--one that you didn't bring up but we'll get into, and the other one you did touch on.
Earlier today we talked about pounds for lobsters. Some of the processor companies have these pounds, and it was suggested that there should be a community-type pound for fishermen. I'd like you to elaborate a little on that. How useful would that particular initiative be for fishermen?
The second thing you brought up is EI. We haven't had a chance to have a good discussion on the EI fund. That's going to be on the back end of this year's fishery, which will be just as important. You alluded to spreading it out to 2011. Maybe we could get into a bit more detail on that. I'd like to hear your thoughts.
In the recent budget it was announced that there would be an extra five weeks of EI. That doesn't apply on P.E.I; it's not going to help anybody here. We need to look at the EI system and how it can help us. I hope this will give you a window of opportunity for us to hear more detail on that.