Fisheries committee  I think what you would need on Bill C-45—There are some good things in Bill C-45, as people in my industry have mentioned. I say by the time you get to the good things, you'll be dead. It's not a good feast when you can't eat it. The reality is that there needs to be broad consul

Fisheries committee  I thank you for the question. You've just provided probably the first glimpse of some sanity into how we can manage our fisheries on an ongoing basis. There are many models out there that are results-based, instead of rules-based. I used to be in the forest sector in B.C. We

Fisheries committee  Can I just respond to that? We do agree. We do agree, but it's the role of government, when unexpected things happen within their jurisdiction, to try to address them in a timely fashion and to mitigate against any negative consequences as a result of those actions. Fundamentally

Fisheries committee  Yes, that's correct, and through our JPA we have agreed to the use of fish to fund science. I have talked to my members and I asked, “How did we get there?” And they said “If we didn't agree to it, DFO said they wouldn't do it, and if DFO didn't do it, they'd take a very conserv

Fisheries committee  We would deal with starting with the groundfish manager up to the RDG, but those decisions are not made there. Those decisions are made in Ottawa. At the time there was an exchange of e-mails between the former executive director and the regional office, which said, “Are you sure

Fisheries committee  I'd have to check, Mr. Stoffer, to find out, but the individual who relayed that to us also said that it was not their decision, that it had been sent up the flag to Ottawa. So somebody in Ottawa had looked at this and said it was business as usual, which was rather arrogant, an

Fisheries committee  As Christina had indicated earlier, even that was way too little. In actual fact, if this year we did just the science that was done pre-Larocque and paid for by the government, there'd be a shortfall of probably $20 million. Two-thirds of the activities will go unfunded. I thi

Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  These estimates get more complicated to read, but you've got to be able to separate it down into its component parts. What we do know is that the department indicates that $25 million to $28 million worth of work was done last year pre-Larocque through an allocation of fish. We k

Fisheries committee  I think people will question this. I read the JPA when I took over for the Sablefish Association, and I have to tell you, it's brilliantly written. If we got one-tenth of the benefits out of it that we're supposed to get, I'd say hallelujah. The reality is the documents sometimes

Fisheries committee  Mr. Cuzner, it's the wild west out there. DFO gave a briefing to this committee, I think in January, as a follow-up note to a presentation they made in December. They clearly indicated—I'm not going to look for it now, but it's in my documents here—that once Larocque came out,

Fisheries committee  Mr. Asselin, I guess I come at this from a number of perspectives. I was here ten years, so I understand, or I hope I would understand from being here, what the public interest is and the role of Parliament in appropriating funds to support broad public objectives and also execut

Fisheries committee  Is it possible for Geoff to answer that? He has a real practical situation here in B.C.

Fisheries committee  I think Bill C-45 is here because the department lacked the policy framework to correct Larocque. The Fisheries Act, I think, is here not because it's been well thought out nor because it's had a broad consultative process. There's been no consultation—zero. There's been no consu

Fisheries committee  So B.C. may be a little different, but constitutionally we believe the federal government has the responsibility to cover all those costs.