Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I want to thank you both for joining us today.
Thank you so much, Captain Bender, for your service to our country and for leading the charge on this initiative. Thank you so much for your testimony here today. I truly appreciate what you have been working on and are proposing to this committee.
I would start by saying that we've heard from our departmental officials in the hour previous to this opportunity to hear from you. With all due respect to our departmental officials, I am left feeling that there needs to be a distinction between a heritage wreck and an ocean war grave. I'm also left believing that I would like to see Canada follow the actions of perhaps the United States or the United Kingdom in introducing stand-alone legislation in this regard. That's after reading what I've read and hearing what I've heard.
I certainly am not terribly intimate with all the work that's been done on this project, so I'm left wondering if you could comment and provide some input back to us on what you may have heard in the hour previous to this one, given there's a recommendation to this committee that this issue be addressed through regulations—regulations that would be perhaps overseen by numerous departments.