Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech in the House about this important matter. I have two questions pertaining to the committee.
He mentioned quite a bit about the committee seeming to have a hard time trying to get the scale and scope of what is happening out there with illegal fishing. The first question is this. What was the problem there? Was it a lack of witnesses, or did the witnesses not have the knowledge? Did the committee ask any international witnesses to come forward?
My second question is this. Why has it taken so long for this bill to finally come forward? Has the committee been pushing over the years to get it? It seems that this could have been done a long time ago, because other countries seem to be ahead of us.