Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to start out with Mr. Zeman and Mr. Haskell. I'll direct my question to them.
The government has added resources to the B.C. salmon restoration and innovation fund, yet it has not even paid out the funds that it had in recent years, and valuable proposals were rejected at the same time. At the meeting on July 23, 2020, Mr. Zeman told the committee that in the first year of the BCSRIF, and I'll quote, “there were actually applications from first nations to transition to more selective methods, and those applications were turned down.”
We've heard repeatedly that non-selective fishing is hurting at-risk stocks of salmon. Then we heard that proposals from indigenous communities wanting to move to selective fishing methods were rejected by BCSRIF.
I'll ask first Mr. Zeman and then Mr. Mr. Haskell. How do we ensure that the funds provided for the BCSRIF actually make it to the projects on the ground and achieve the results?