I guess what I would say, to repeat what I said earlier, is that consultation is in the eye of the beholder to a certain extent. I think the department and our partners have carried out adequate consultation. We've made ourselves available. Have we stopped in every little community? Perhaps not, but individuals have the opportunity to submit written comments as well as appear if there's a public hearing. I've heard from the fishing industry—as we mentioned, we get a lot of feedback from them—that sometimes lack of consultation is translated as their perhaps not having enough time to arrive at the same conclusion. It's not that they are not consulted. It's just that they'd like to have perhaps more time to carry out an activity or more time before changes are brought into play. I think it's a bit of both. I certainly can't say that the individuals who say they don't feel they were adequately consulted are not speaking the truth from their perspective, but I can say that the department has made many endeavours to consult, to the extent possible within the time frames, on each of the MPAs.
On February 6th, 2018. See this statement in context.