Mr. Chairman, when I read a report like this, I always think of Fidel Castro's famous words, that if you can't shoot them, you have to educate them. Somebody in the coast guard has to be educated.
When I hear a report that says the Auditor General identified three examples of poor maintenance and lost or badly written manuals that resulted in over $8 million wasted..... If they can't handle this simple task, how can they handle complex tasks like guarding our coast? When the general public hears that, they get very, very nervous, and so does our largest trading ally, the United States. That's just a comment.
I have a copy of the Conservative platform of 2006. It says that they will establish the Canadian Coast Guard as a stand-alone agency. Madame d'Auray or Monsieur Da Pont, have you been given instruction by the government that you will now become a stand-alone agency? Since the 1995 merger with DFO, the people I speak to at the Dartmouth base and bases across the country have indicated that although it was different merging the two cultures together, in many cases it has been nothing but an unmitigated disaster. The Auditor General report has proven that.
So have you been given instruction to become a stand-alone agency?