Mr. Chair, that's certainly a very unfair question, because Mr. Cummins has absolutely no idea what goes on in my department. My department not only keeps me informed, but I direct most of what goes on in my department, including several visits to the west coast dealing with this and other issues.
Let's lay the cards on the table, if that's what we want to do. We've had problems on the west coast this year, and a lot of them have been caused by a group of people, involving you, Mr. Cummins, because you didn't like what we were doing with the groundfish integration plan, or our plan to try to bring peace to the Fraser River. And there were a lot of others involved.
We have had contact with small fishermen. We have worked with them. We have had people dealing directly with them to make sure that costs were spread so they could survive in this. We have numerous people who've said that without the changes we made, they wouldn't have survived this year.
I am not going to change because one little sector of one group is upset. We will try to do what we can to help everybody, but we're not going to be blackmailed by a handful of people with vested interests.
Other than that, we will try to manage a very tough department with problems in every single part of the country. But we have used the field--including industry, which was heavily involved in this process. If you or some of the others were not involved, then I blame you rather than them, because certainly the people you talk about.... Mr. Wickham was heavily involved. He came in and nodded his head when the report was presented, then afterwards changed his mind. And there were other people around the table when this happened.
Mr. Chair, I'm not sure where Mr. Cummins is coming from. I know he has concerns; I appreciate it. There are people in this industry who are being hurt every day, but we have done our best based upon what we have. I try to be as hands-on as anybody, on this issue in particular. There probably wasn't a day that went by, not to say a week or a month, when we weren't trying to figure out what was happening here, what changes we have to make. We talked with groups. We talked with individuals. We massaged. We changed. We had people working with industry to spread costs, to get more involved.
If you talk to the people who were affected, the majority of them will tell you it was the best year they've had in a long time. And we have had lists of requests to make sure we continue with this program.
Does it need to be massaged? Certainly. If there's somebody being hurt, will we do something about it? Absolutely. Is the small guy the one we want to push aside? I came from a small boat, and if there is one group we would try to look after, it would be the small-boat fishermen.