Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank our guests for appearing here today.
As usual with the fishery in this province, there are a lot issues and very little time to try to hammer out some of those issues. But in listening to the presentations this morning, I sense a major amount of frustration with a lot of the rules and regulations we have in place and I also sense a deep feeling that we have a lot of things to straighten up in our own backyard before we try to straighten up what's over in Europe's backyard, the European community.
I have many questions, and one of them has to do with the race mentality and having a fair share to go around in relation to the quota itself. Maybe, John, you can touch on your numbers. The sealing numbers are well up with regard to population. Their quota has increased somewhat over the past year, over 300,000 pelts.
Can we maintain a larger hunt? And with regard to race mentality, is an IQ system the way to go with it? A lot of our fisheries are now IQ, and it's probably working very well in a lot of places. I know in my own area down in southern Avalon with regard to crab and those things, that works very well. Perhaps you and maybe someone else can touch on the sealing aspect. I'm just trying to find out how you address that race mentality. It seems to be a problem with the opening and the closing, and so on.