Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses for joining us today.
I heard a number of excellent points made, and I'd like to start with you, Mr. Berry. I wanted to bring this study forward and I know we're at the end of the parliamentary session, so we're unlikely to be able to provide a report, but having this evidence on the record is important.
I want to go through a couple of the things that you mentioned. First is the adequacy of the number of fisheries officers.
I've learned in my time as member of Parliament for West Nova the amount of work that we're asking the fisheries officers to do, the ground that they have to cover and the number of fishing enterprises that they are responsible for monitoring. I know that our government has put in $50 million and will be hiring an additional 100 DFO officers for all of Canada. That's a good start, but we're obviously not going to see the impact for a little while on the ground, and there needs to be more done.
What can you say, Mr. Berry, about the adequacy of the number of officers and of the equipment they have? I know that you mentioned that they need more boats and all of that for patrolling LFAs 33, 34 and 35 all around southwestern Nova Scotia.