Thank you, Robert.
Thank you, Madam Minister.
The first thing I'd like to do is acknowledge that yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the 1914 sealing disasters off Newfoundland when the SS Southern Cross was lost at sea and when the SS Newfoundland lost a number of fishermen on the ice. In total 251 Newfoundland and Labrador sealers were killed. It was the anniversary yesterday. I just wanted to acknowledge that at the beginning of the meeting.
My specific question has to do with shrimp quotas off Newfoundland and Labrador. The word in the industry in my province, Madam Minister, is that total biomass is down, and it's down dramatically, and the industry is actually expecting cuts in the shrimp quotas in the order of 15,000 to 20,000 tonnes. Now that creates a number of interesting scenarios in terms of how you as the minister and your department decide how to cut the quota. It's either the last-in-first-out policy or you go with the new principle, the principle of adjacency, which is being promoted in a lot of areas in my province. How exactly would you address cuts to the shrimp quota?
Finally, shrimp seems to be yet another in a long list of commercial stocks off Newfoundland and Labrador that have collapsed. DFO just can't get the management right. The simple question is why?