To clarify one or two things on that, I haven't been around too many years—seven or eight now—but to be frank, I haven't seen a single change that has been proposed or made over which you couldn't find people who felt they hadn't been consulted. You'll always find some people who, unless the fisheries minister went up to them on a particular day and said, “What do you think about this?”, are going to feel they haven't been consulted.
Mr. Donnelly, when you were talking to these fishermen in Nova Scotia and other parts of the Maritimes and in Newfoundland and Labrador, I hope you asked them if they took the time to respond to the consultation process that was online for a number of weeks. Nobody was without an opportunity to make a well-reasoned, compelling case on how the fishery should be modernized. If these people wanted to state their case that they felt these policies should be maintained, they certainly had the opportunity to do so. They weren't left out of this process.
The fact is, though, there are many, many fishermen—and I think you were probably talking to some of them—who are making a poor living. I don't think that's a great thing. Given that fact, the consultations were about whether there are changes that could be made to the way we manage these fisheries that would allow individuals to prosper and not just barely make it by, or in many cases have to depend on fisheries EI. I think those are valid questions to ask, and that's why the consultation was held.
It's not clear to me, but one could infer from this motion that Mr. Donnelly is in favour of reversing the practices in British Columbia, where there is no fleet separation policy and no owner-operator policy being applied. For that reason alone, I think I would not be able to support this motion. We will be opposing it.