Fisheries committee  Thank you for the question. As the minister noted, there has been no reduction to the coast guard environmental response budget, and there has been no reduction in our on-water response capacity in terms of response specialists. With regard to the Simushir incident, in fact tha

Fisheries committee  It's probably Trevor on science.

Fisheries committee  The science is a critical element of how we respond to incidents. Understanding the behaviour of substances in the water is critical in terms of knowing how to respond. Knowing what the habitat is in the area and all those kinds of things are critical to an effective response. W

Fisheries committee  In the case of the Marathassa.... Number one, I have to clarify there has not been a 50% reduction to the environmental response budget.

Fisheries committee  Right. We had a one-time infusion of money to respond to the Brigadier General M.G. Zalinski wreck in northern B.C. That was $46.5 million for one year. We spent under $25 million cleaning that vessel and that money is no longer in the budget. It is not a cut to the A-base budget

Fisheries committee  The polluter-pay system is very clear that the polluter is responsible, and if the polluter cannot be identified, then yes, coast guard is the on-scene commander. That was the role we played.

Fisheries committee  That's a relatively simplistic explanation of what occurred.

Fisheries committee  I am.

Fisheries committee  We were the incident commander, which is different from being the on-scene commander. The incident commander is in the integrated command centre where we bring everybody involved in the spill into a centre. We were in charge there. There was never a loss of coast guard leadership

Fisheries committee  The coast guard took charge of the incident within 20 minutes of being informed of a sheen on the water.

Fisheries committee  I'm telling you that there are multiple steps and it doesn't go straight to booming. You have to identify what vessel is sinking.

Fisheries committee  I will reiterate that there should be no confusion or no confidence lost. The coast guard responded. We are drafting a terms of reference for a post-op that we will do. We do this after every incident. This one is no different.

Fisheries committee  There are multiple elements to a response to a leak of fuel. Number one, identifying the vessel was critical. That took a long time.

Fisheries committee  Yes, but I'm explaining—

Fisheries committee  Well, you're not letting me answer.