What is true is that there's a committee in place called the Northern Shrimp Advisory Committee. What is not true are statements that some people have made, from DFO, that the changes in the wording and in the policy definitions in that act were supported by our organization. I'll give you an example.
Here is what was in the 2003 Northern Shrimp Advisory Committee meeting. That was back in the days when they published this stuff in book form. As one of the long-term objectives for this fishery, it said: “To provide fair access to and equitable sharing of the northern shrimp resource with particular emphasis on the needs of the people and communities most adjacent to the resource, without any permanent increase in harvesting capacity.”
It said “particular emphasis to the people and communities most adjacent to the resource”. In the next iteration of this management plan four years later, that special consideration was removed, with no agreement from people on that committee. That's what I meant by “surreptitious”. I have no idea how that decision was made to remove that. They certainly can't say that the committee made a decision to do it because that was never approved by the committee.
I've traced back the various drafts they sent from the department on that integrated fisheries management plan in 2007. I went back over my files as far as draft 5, and that change wasn't in there. At some point between draft 5 and the next thing we saw, they said “here's the final document”, and it had wording in there that I would never ever agree to removing. So there was stuff that went on behind closed doors. It was not done in a transparent manner, sir.