Mr. Speaker, it was a nice speech that the minister read and just spent the last two or three minutes talking about an issue which is irrelevant to the discussion today. It goes to show just how much he knows about the issue at hand.
He suggested this review, that he has put in place, has been welcomed by the industry, but the integrated harvest planning committee was not happy, at least all members were not happy. As suggested earlier, the commercial salmon advisory board wrote Mr. Williams about this very fact. It was very upset that it was not consulted by the minister or the department regarding its view on how the review should be conducted prior to the minister making his announcement in assigning the integrated harvest planning committee the task. In addition the members of the board said that the minister's appointment and draft terms of reference were presented to the committee at the end of the inaugural meeting in which the committee was discussing its own structure, process, procedures and terms of reference. They are not happy with the way this has been handled. It is not what they signed on for.
This review is going to take a long time. It cannot be rushed. These folks signed on for a few days of meetings, maybe two or three times a year, not to get into the kind of in-depth review that is required.
Why did the minister not broadly consult before he embarked on this review? Why were fewer fisheries officers on the job this summer than there were in 1994?