Thank you, Mr. Randell.
Thank you, Mr. Manning.
I'm just going to sum up quickly here, gentlemen, and not take too much time.
There is obviously some disconnect here, and it was certainly something that we recognized as a committee it was important to discuss—boat stability throughout Atlantic Canada in particular—to make sure everyone was aware of what was going on.
I will tell you, I represent South Shore—St. Margaret's, which is a big fishery riding in southwest Nova Scotia. We probably have 1,000 boats fishing on the water everywhere from the high Arctic to the Grand Banks to the inshore. They were all aware of it. They had been going to the meetings. They thought it was moving too fast, they wanted to slow it down, they wanted to be able to have hull types tested, and they wanted more input when it was brought in.
For the record, I will tell you that there was a meeting—we just looked it up—in Gander on April 19, 2005. I understand that would have been a Transport Canada meeting. So there was a meeting in Newfoundland.
But that aside, part of the difficulty is that the fishery has changed. I understand Mr. Cull's comments, because they're the same comments I hear in southwest Nova Scotia, that you don't want boat length to change effort: the number of fishing days, the amount of catch. That's a great fear amongst a lot of fishermen.
At the same time, we have some licence holders on 34' 11'' boats fishing out of southwest Nova Scotia on Georges Bank. They're out 150 miles offshore, and it's definitely not safe.