Clearly a number of fisheries in the Pacific have already gone to ITQ. In that situation the individual transferable quotas did result in adjusting the effort in accordance with the available quota and having more efficient use of the capital and labour in those fisheries. It did, however, have impacts on coastal communities in the west. In the east we do have enterprise allocations for the offshore. Again, that did result in a balance of the effort to the available resources for the offshore. Also, we have a number of ITQ and IQ fisheries in parts of the Atlantic. However, most of the Atlantic inshore fishery was conducted under the policy of maintaining core fishermen as the licence holders. That was designed to remove part-timers over time. As they left the fishery, their licences weren't transferable, so as they left, there would be a small reduction in the effort. But the core fishery policy did not allow one core fisherman to combine enterprises with another. It didn't allow one core fisherman to buy out the quotas of another, etc. The design of that policy was to maintain the employment and the effort in the coastal communities.
However, in the face of today's realities with the cost of energy, the dollar, and competition in China, etc., it has meant there's general consensus that we have to look at other ways of doing business. That's why the policy change announced April 12, 2007, was to allow fishing interests and fleets to consider ways they could combine enterprises. That's moved ahead in Newfoundland and Labrador with a policy that was designed there, after lots of consultations, to allow enterprises to be combined. Those discussions are going to take place in the rest of the Atlantic where those fisheries don't have individual quotas or transferable quotas to consider ways that we can combine.
The whole issue of preserving the independence of the inshore fleet in Atlantic Canada was designed to pull out from under the table all those trust agreements, etc., and put it all up top so we can all have a good discussion of where we are now and where we want to go. If we want to have combining in the fleets, that will be up to the fleets to consider and to consider the kinds of rules they want to impose upon themselves.