Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses, many of whom are finding out about our late committee slot here. It's good to see you participating late into the evening. We appreciate it.
Certainly, my takeaway from the testimony that we've heard so far this evening is that the government actually did a pretty poor job of consulting with the most affected individuals and organizations when they were developing this legislation. It was billed as a great panacea to supply chain problems. It was going to revolutionize the way the ports operated. What we're hearing, and what we've heard from every witness so far, is that this misses the mark. We heard that, in fact, this will make things more difficult and more politicized instead of streamlining and making our ports more effective and efficient.
I want to start with Mr. Gooch.
I was interested to hear both you and Mr. Hamilton indicate that the Minister of Transport and his office have already indicated to you.... He has yet to appear to talk to parliamentarians about Bill C-33, but we are hearing from witness testimony here today that they're already willing to make amendments to the bill. I assume they're responding to port authority concerns about the prescriptive nature of.... I think you mentioned it. Can you go a little further into that?
This is the first I'm hearing about it, that the Minister of Transport and his officials.... We had officials. They didn't make this known to our committee at the last meeting either.
Could you further enlighten us on what these changes are that the minister's office has indicated they're willing to make? Quite frankly, it's news to me and members of this committee.