Thank you.
The parliamentary secretary indicated Mr. Bonnell's release in the newspaper. Anyone who knows Mr. Bonnell knows that he never burns any bridges; he's a person who accepts decisions whether he likes them or not, because he knows he has to work with any government and any politician at any time in any industry. This is what makes him so good at his job: his practicality in dealing with government officials, bureaucrats, people in the industry, and, most importantly, fishermen.
I want to reassure my colleague Mr. Van Kesteren. I've been on the committee since 1997; we've had our differences on committees before, but this and the veterans committee are the two best committees in the House. Regardless of what comes out of this and what Mr. Weston reports in the House, this committee will still operate as one of the best committees on the planet.
We may have our slight differences on the way things are worded, but anyone who's ever negotiated collective agreements knows that one word can change the entire phrase in a collective agreement. An example is changing the word “may” to “shall”, or using the word “reconsider”.
I remind you that the report says that we “recommend”. It doesn't say we absolutely strongly will shoot the hell out of you and burn your house down if you don't do it; it just says we “recommend”. The government still has the option to say “Thank you very much for your recommendation, but go pound sand”. They will do it politely, of course. They still have the option to say no, which they may end up doing.
We have to show that at least we listened to the evidence. The evidence made it quite clear to us that the CCFI is an important industry, and we would like to recommend--not “reconsider”, because you already know what the decisions have been before--that they get going and restore the funding to it.
Basically I would say to Mr. Van Kesteren that I'm honoured to have you on the committee, sir, as well as Mr. Kamp, and we'll continue to work together. Don't worry about shots over the bow. If you want to see a shot over the bow, get EI going and you'll go crazy on that. The EI committee's gone crazy.