Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's nice to see everyone again.
I think that's a good compromise. We've done it before. We've done two studies simultaneously. Given that we need to find the space for witnesses in both studies, it gives the clerk some flexibility to work out which one on which day works best with regard to which witnesses are available.
This is a critical issue. We've had a fishery that has been closed essentially to commercial fishery since 1992, which is 32 years, and the main harvesting stakeholders are not happy with the decision. I know that everyone across the country, when they saw the national media stories that the commercial fishery was back—“Isn't this wonderful? The cod fishery is back,” as the media reported it—were probably surprised to learn the union representing the harvesters and a lot of scientists and others were concerned about two aspects of this: One is the move from 13,000 to 18,000, and the other is the allowance by the government to have NAFO vessels, most likely Spanish and Portuguese, on the edge of our waters again fishing cod, which I understand are there now. These are the countries that contributed significantly to the collapse in the early 1990s.
This is a very urgent issue as the fishing is going on now, so I think MP Barron's subamendment to MP Kelloway's amendment to MP Small's motion is a valuable compromise.