Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for coming, gentlemen.
In his last few comments, Mr. Watkins basically touched on what I was going to ask about when he talked about the different fisheries that he participates in. Each fishery is different, and it has different effects on your vessel, I would think, depending on the type of fishery it is.
You're restricted by the length of your vessel. As a result of that, people have gone to modifying their vessels, as you said, in width and by going up higher. We've seen some very tragic situations in our province in the last little while. People say they were caused by vessel instability, but I guess they're still being investigated and studied or something or another.
I think the dilemma for the government has been that DFO will say that if we let them go to the vessel size they want, then the demand is going to be for more resources, because the vessel expenses are going to be higher. So that's what you get coming from DFO. We can't let them go to bigger boats, because then they're going to be yapping for more fish, but where are the fish going to come from, blah blah blah.
My take on it is that if you're a true enterprise, if you're a business, and you decide to go to a bigger vessel for safety and stability reasons, then you will suffer the consequences if you can't pay your bills. That's my belief.
So in a roundabout way of getting to a question, do you think government should free up your boat size and let you go to something longer and bigger if you so desire, with you taking on the consequences? Is that the answer to it, or is there something I'm missing?