I call the meeting to order.
Good morning everybody. I was going to say welcome to Miramichi, but I think I'll let Mr. Finnigan do that. I haven't been back here in years and it's absolutely as gorgeous as I left it.
This is the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans from Ottawa. We are a committee that vets legislation primarily, but we also do studies, which is why we are here today. We are currently embarking on two studies. We just came from Newfoundland and Labrador for the cod study. Now we're here for the second study. We passed a motion on April 21, 2016, introduced by Mr. Finnigan, the member of Parliament. It states that the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans agree to undertake a comprehensive study on the conservation, restoration, and socio-economic issues related to the Atlantic salmon in Canada.
We thank our witnesses this morning, but we're going to depart from that for just a moment. I'm going to ask the MPs to introduce themselves, so you see the composition that we have. We have three parties represented: Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP.
With that, I'm going to ask Mr. Finnigan, who probably doesn't need an introduction, to go ahead, please.