Thank you, Chair. I apologize for being late to the meeting. I have a keen interest in this. I believe my colleague Mr. Sopuck probably touched on most of the items that are important to me.
As I'm reading through your recommendations, Madam Commissioner, it seems to me the issue that you cite on page 1 of your report, which is the depletion of food sources by fisheries, seems to indicate that the only depletion of the food source is through fisheries, commercial and/or sport fishing, and not through other natural causes. There seems to be no reference to any of these recommendations made to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans or others, including Parks Canada, on wildlife management controls.
There is some loose language—I don't mean it in a negative way—that I would like some clarification on. Regarding paragraph 2.42, at the end of the very first paragraph in Fisheries and Oceans Canada's response, it says,“These networks will include marine protected areas established under the Oceans Act and marine refuges established under the Fisheries Act, as well as other departments’ conservation tools.”
That whole paragraph talks about what the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is doing. None of the recommendations that I see actually address the fact that there's not enough salmon in the ocean. They talk about shutting everything down that might be causing a reduction in salmon in the ocean, but I don't see a single recommendation or a single notion anywhere here about enhancing the number of salmon that might be in the ocean.
Did you have any conversations with anybody at the department or from any of the departments that talked about anything that pertained to salmon enhancement?