Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
Before we get to the business of the day, before we get down to work, I would like to pass this along to the public as well as all of our committee members here. It's something tragic that happened recently.
Christian Brun has been a witness here for years. He's the director general of the Maritime Fishermen's Union and the president of the Canadian Independent Fish Harvester's Federation. Those are just two of his titles. He has passed away.
On behalf of the committee, we would like to send out condolences to his family. To pay our respects—I don't know if this has been done before—given his involvement in this industry and the times that he's appeared in front of us, I would like to ask everyone here in the room for a moment of silence for Mr. Brun.
[A moment of silence observed]
Thank you, everybody, for that.
There is one item that we have to address. In talking to my colleagues, I realize that there's a problem that has come up.
My apologies to the witnesses. We'll be there in just a few moments.
We have received hundreds of submissions. As you know, input to this study was through our website, the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. The deadline passed November 30 and we received hundreds. The process to have these submissions translated has now come to our attention. Just to give you an idea, well over 90% of the submissions were in one language, either French or in English, not bilingual. Therefore, as the rules dictate, in order for me to distribute them, they have to be in both official languages.
Because of the number of submissions we have received, it's going to take a lot of time. As you know, next week we're in camera, and we're coming with suggestions for recommendations to go into this report. I've been advised that a lot of them will not be ready in both official languages. As you know, if we are to distribute in one language only, we have to receive the unanimous consent of the committee to do this.
Are there any questions on this before we go to a unanimous consent vote?
We have been assured that eventually they will be translated and distributed to the committee; it just won't be any time soon. Therefore, I'm asking the committee for unanimous consent to distribute them to the committee in one language only, as is.
Mr. Arnold.