Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm happy that Mr. Williamson has brought this motion forward. In my five years of being on the fisheries committee, as Mr. Calkins stated, I don't ever recall not having officials come in to give us the background, the history, the reasons and the place on the ground where we are at this point in time, so that we can understand better the information we've received from witnesses.
This certainly isn't to detract from the three witnesses we have today. This is something the committee should have hashed out before we started off on this path, so that we have some groundwork, a foundation to work from, so that we know the reasoning behind the Marshall I and Marshall II positions. How did we go 20 years...? Some say there's been no movement, while some say there has been movement on those decisions. However, without knowing what the department has done, without hearing from the minister on what's taking place at the current time, I don't believe there's any way we can move forward as this committee to make reasonable recommendations for resolving this issue as quickly as possible so that everyone can get back to doing what they really want to do.
I fully support the idea that we need to hear from the department, from the officials and the minister, so that we can better understand where we need to move on from at this point. Without that, there's so much that's up in the air. We've agreed that this is an urgent and emerging study, but who has the responsibility to define what a moderate livelihood is? Is that the government's responsibility? Is it the Mi'kmaq band's responsibility to define that? Is it the people of Canada? Who should have a say in that?
There are many people's lives at stake that we, as a dozen committee members, are expected to rule on, or at least make recommendations on. We need to have the basis to make those decisions.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.