Fisheries committee  No. The particular department cannot use the sale of quota to finance.... The department can charge a fee for a licence; it does that already. But it cannot use revenue from quota to pay for its activities.

Fisheries committee  Certainly not.

Fisheries committee  I think that statement is correct. If, at some point, a group of fishers wanted to take money out of their own pocket to contribute to the costs of an activity in partnership with the government, whether scientific in nature or something else, in my opinion, this would not run co

Fisheries committee  Very quickly, the advantage for bureaucrats in saying that one pays 20% and the other pays 100% is very simple: it's divide and conquer. This is something we've seen at DFO for a long time. Anybody who's been involved with that department knows that. This has to stop. We're goi

Fisheries committee  It deals with one case—one case that happened in 2003. Another judgment, the APPFA judgment from Federal Court, also has jurisprudence that deals with a situation in 2005. There are specific cases of using resources to finance government activities, but there are an awful lot

Fisheries committee  They are holding the money.

Fisheries committee  We don't know. We're going to court. We have applied for mandamus to force the department to pay that money out. It is in a legal proceeding right now, but that is another example that goes to show this chaotic situation.

Fisheries committee  Yes. I have an example too. In area 12 in 2006 an allocation of 1,000 tonnes of crab was given to APPFA, a fishermen's organization, in exchange for $1.9 million that would go to pay for science. Following the Larocque decision on June 23, a lot of that money had not been spent

Fisheries committee  This is just a very quick example. With snow crab, you have stock assessment surveys. They're done yearly. They allow you to know, in real time, how much available commercial biomass there is in the water. As an example, in 2003, just before Larocque—the decision of Larocque come

Fisheries committee  It was established in 1995 and was based on some very good intentions: the government wanted to fund partnership agreements with the fishery by giving it more responsibilities and some decision-making power. The fact is that the department did not have the authority required to a

Fisheries committee  Our main concern, Mr. Asselin, is the lack of a clear policy on the part of the federal government and Fisheries and Oceans following the Larocque decision. The problem is that no decision or program tells fishers clearly how scientific research will be funded. Some of our collea

Fisheries committee  Larocque is the same as Décary.

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Asselin. I will try to answer your question, because I am the person who is probably the most familiar with the Larocque decision. I worked on this issue as a consultant with the fishers involved, the crabbers in zone 12. What you say is quite righ