Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's my first chance to speak to this committee. I've been sitting here listening for the last hour, and I just want to go back to two things.
First of all, the purpose of the steering committee, I understand, was to set out the work plan of the committee, and reading all the documentation that the department and the Library of Parliament and all the rest have provided to the clerk, my understanding is that in April of this year the committee had wanted to initiate a study of the snow crab industry in Atlantic Canada, and that was the priority of the committee, to continue with that particular study.
Now we've brought in this motion, and I have two thoughts. One is the fact that if the cabinet votes to turn down the application, all this is a waste of time, and if they do vote to proceed, then we can bring in all the parties to have a discussion. As my colleague Mr. Weston said, my riding is a couple of hours away from this area, in the interior and the northern part of British Columbia. It's not only a very interesting issue, but it's a very complex issue, there are many partners, and the evaluation has been ongoing for many years. To spend two hours is just a mockery of the whole system.
So I think it would be a disservice to the committee and the integrity of this committee to proceed in this fashion. If you're going to do a study, you do it in depth and you have all the parties and invite everybody or you wait till the process unfolds and then have a post-mortem.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.