Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister and officials for being here with us today.
As parliamentarians, we were involved in the amendments to the Fisheries Act in Bill C-38 and then some smaller changes in Bill C-45, with most of those changes relating to the fisheries protection provisions of the Fisheries Act.
In your comments you referred a bit to it, but I just wonder if you could expand and tell us why you think those changes to the Fisheries Act were needed. And could either you or your officials provide an update on the status of the coming into force of the provisions and the implementation of the new fisheries protection program?