Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much, folks, for being here, the three of you. As a member of this committee, I can't tell you how disappointed I am that this hearing has been interrupted and that we're not going to have as much time as we need to discuss the important work that you and your organizations do in your respective jurisdictions.
I asked a couple of questions of Mr. Farrant and I left off with one, but I'm going to leave it unanswered, because I only have a couple of minutes and I'm going to try to squeeze in my colleagues here for questions.
Mr. Kristianson, you mentioned that the last time you were before the committee there was a huge tussle going on between the commercial and the recreational fishery over quota allocation.
What I'd like to say is that I don't think there's any member on this committee who doesn't recognize what an important place the recreational fishery has. You've already talked about its economic value being 40%; however, we have to find a way to have discussions to sort out how best to allocate the resource. I would very much like to see those happen more often.
I want to ask you, though, a question about something that's happening in other jurisdictions around habitat protection and restoration. DFO has the authority to impose offsets when there is damage to fish habitat as a result of development, whether from culverts or other types of developments, in rivers in particular and on the coastline. In some jurisdictions, their tenacity in enforcing that authority has dropped. The offset used to be 3:1, and it has now dropped down to 1:1 in many cases.
It's an incredibly important source of funding for some organizations to help repair damage done to fish habitat.
I'd like your comment on that, Mr. Bird and Mr. Kristianson, from your experience in British Columbia.