Thank you very much for inviting us here today. It is very important that we work more closely with the federal government to improve our exports, which create a lot of jobs, and to make sure we have food security in the provinces and in the country. I appreciate the work the previous government did with Nova Scotia and what the present governments are doing with Nova Scotia in helping Nova Scotia achieve its goals.
Last year was the first year that we saw a growth in our population and the numbers of employed people go up. That's a very positive sign. I've already talked about automation in our fish processing operations as an area in which we need to move more quickly. There's lot of fish that's shipped because we can't process it. We can add that value. Not only do the owner-operators add tremendous value to the community, but so do all the other harvesters. We also need to process that product here and add value. We have some people who are very successful and we're doing more and more of it, but we really need help from the federal government to help finance innovation in that area.
Thank you.