Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank the witnesses for being here today. It's great to have you in to give us further information on this report.
I don't mean to sound facetious, but getting back to what Mr. Donnelly started to address, in 1995, DFO committed to developing integrated fisheries management plans for the major fish stocks. In 2001, they recommitted to developing those plans. Last year, the commissioner's report identified that there were still 44 stocks for which plans hadn't been developed or plans needed to be revised.
What we saw by way of a response was that the department had committed to developing a plan to develop plans. Yes, develop a plan to develop plans that were committed to some 20 ago. Can you explain why it's taken more than 20 years to develop plans, and now all you've reached after this environment commissioner's report is a plan to develop plans?