Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon, Ms. Shea, and good afternoon to the ladies and gentlemen accompanying the minister.
First of all, I also want to join in extending a special welcome to David. We are quite pleased to see him again and I am not saying this because those who replaced him were not up to the task. We are simply very pleased to see him again.
I have a number of questions to ask, but first I would like to get back to what my colleague touched on, in other words the direct assistance program to deal with the lobster crisis.
Very serious problems have arisen over the last few years. Finally, in 2009, there was some budgetary appropriation, but I was expecting, perhaps naively, that the $15 million that was announced would not be enough. I will not pass on the comments we heard in Quebec and that I forwarded to you, as to the amounts that were finally granted to Quebec fishers. In fact, it amounts to $8.5 million out of a $15 million program.
I do wonder about one thing: was the direct assistance program requested of Treasury Board by the department something makeshift? Were the figures wrong, or the calculations? I would have preferred to have heard that $15 million was not enough, that we are asking for $20-odd million, that we will find some other way and work together to make sure that there will be more money invested into this program. Given the fact that $8.5 million has been spent out of a total $15 million earmarked for emergency assistance to the lobster industry, it would seem to me that there is a serious management problem here. I would like your explanation on these figures.