Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We've done this a number of times. We bring witnesses in to do a study, in this case, on mackerel. We have people here who have prepared to come in for this and now all of a sudden a motion is moved. In my opinion, this is wasting the time of the people we brought in. We could have discussed this later on.
I'm not sure what the urgency is exactly, but I do know what the urgency is for the mackerel season for this year. We have fishermen who have come forward today who would like to see the season open this year. Time is slowly slipping away on getting the season open this year for a lot of people.
As I read through this and look at all the documents that need to be prepared—internal review processes, peer reviews, many documents that need to be reviewed and presented—I think that even the timeline of when it can be presented is very short.
It only asks for one two-hour meeting with DFO to be held one week after all of the requested information has been received. We're not going to bring in any other witnesses to provide testimony or to talk about what's in the report. Is it just going to be DFO representatives? I've only been here a year, but I've been involved with FOPO for a number of years in my previous job. I don't think it's ever only been DFO brought in as the witness, with just one meeting.
I honestly can't see what the urgency is for this. As Mr. Morrissey said, there's no decision to be made in this report. It's a collection of data. We should probably look at how we should appropriately review the data if we're going to do a study on it.
Thank you very much.