Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will ask Mr. Hegge to answer that question.

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have no opening statement. I thought the committee would probably prefer to get on with questions. So we'll just pick up where you left off last week with the minister. We're at your disposal, and it's great to be here. Thanks.

Fisheries committee  Yes. The minister has used the same number, as has Mr. Hegge. That's our estimate to the committee—

Fisheries committee  I'll be really quick. We could come back, Mr. Chairman, with a briefing on this if you wanted us to, because it is an area of considerable concern. But we have put in place an environmental process modernization thing to address as much of that issue as we can. We now have an operational statement regime whereby if people file the operational statement, they don't have to go through all the processes.

Fisheries committee  David Bevan might as well. One interesting thing that came out of the consultations in Newfoundland was a focus on operational health and safety, and that part of the professionalization thing was to give fishers some money for some of this. I would say, again, no doors are closed on that, and in the whole stability thing, certainly there has been a concern.

Fisheries committee  Well, safety and that kind of stuff. I think we'll have to work with the Department of Transport and the industry and figure it out, quite frankly, because I think everybody agrees that it is an area that requires attention. I don't know, David, whether there is anything more specific at this point.

Fisheries committee  No. In fact, I think the concluding recommendation is particularly helpful in the circumstances the coast guard finds itself. I think it does point the way ahead, and obviously we need to do that with the Treasury Board involved. As I say, we will be sharing the way forward with them and getting the help of the AG's view of the way forward, and we would be happy to share this with the committee.

Fisheries committee  We're in the same corner as the AG. My concern in responding to it...and in fact we played around with the words on that yesterday. I think if you were to go to our scientists, they would be where the AG is for sure. The reality is that the media report said there had been no surveys done.

Fisheries committee  Yes, so I would say in terms of that, it's not a discrepancy. What the Auditor General has noted in her report you would hear from our scientists. My point is that people did get to see and do a fair amount of work on fisheries science. So the minister isn't flying blind. A fair amount of it was done.

Fisheries committee  May I just say that having come from a navy that has two navies, and it's always a tension, you have to be careful here as well, because actually there are some reasons why the five regionals...things are different. Some of the operations are different, and a cookie-cutter approach out of Ottawa isn't necessarily— We need to be careful that we don't screw up that 98% number.

Fisheries committee  Sure. In relation to a lot of the work that went in at a strategic level to change the organizational structure, to make it a line organization, we also looked at the department from end to end in 2003—

Fisheries committee  Sure. When I left the navy I came as associate deputy minister from 1997 to 1999, which was just after a fairly challenging merger. We were trying to make the structure work, which made sense from a fisheries' perspective. When I came back in spring 2003 there were pretty significant challenges, which this committee is well aware of, since your report actually helped change it.

Fisheries committee  We're certainly going to share it with everybody else. The minister obviously is interested, but there is absolutely no reason why we can't share it with this committee on an ongoing basis. You have a right to that.

Fisheries committee  At the moment, it's purely the Canadian contribution to maritime security in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway system, where we haven't had a presence strictly devoted to this. In terms of bilateral relations on border security and all of that, it may evolve to that. Certainly the information from these vessels and in that system are feeding into an op centre that is part of the package, and that op centre certainly will be connected to other op centres, as they are on the east and west coasts.

Fisheries committee  Could I piggyback onto that? I would indicate that in terms of this business plan, we certainly have every intention of sharing it with the Auditor General. It will also become part of our ongoing input to the Treasury Board in terms of the management accountability framework.