Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses for being here this afternoon, both in person and by Internet.
I'm very pleased to be here. I'm not normally a member of this committee. It's particularly exciting for me when I have both Dr. Laslo-Baker and Dr. Baker from my riding of Victoria, as well as Mr. Stebbins of Archipelago Marine Research, so I'm grateful to you.
I want to say that you're both from Victoria and you're both winners of the BC Export Awards—one, in your case, for a new export category, and Mr. Stebbins, your firm for the sustainability category.
Congratulations to you both. It's really exciting.
I want to ask you both, and I'd invite as well, if I could, Mr. Bar-Ziv, to comment on the following. It's a very wide-open question, and each of you have touched a little bit on it. The question is on how the government of Canada could improve its service delivery to small businesses like yours. You've indicated some problems that you've encountered in trying to grow exports, and some great things you've encountered as well, it needs to be said.
Mr. Stebbins, you talked about VIATeC. You said they provide key communication tools to let you know more about the government programs that are available. This begs the question of whether we should rely on groups like that to get the word out or whether the government should communicate more directly.
I'd ask you to talk about efficiencies, overlaps, gaps, if you would.
Perhaps we could start with Deebee's.