The formal policy was established in 1999, although certainly in some fisheries there were cooperative arrangements that go back quite a long time before that. I would say in the early days we had perhaps a rosier view of co-management than we do now. Many fisheries accepted the terms and conditions of that.
I think the problem in the last decade has been that as DFO budgets have consistently been cut back, there's been a creeping incrementality whereby every year DFO comes back and says, “Well, we need you to fund a bit more”. So the cost to industry has increased, but there hasn't necessarily been any demonstration of what the benefits are that we're getting. One of the problems has been--and we said this in 2002 and we've said it since--that there isn't a clear understanding of what should clearly be for the public good and that government should fund. Are there some things that industry should fund?
I think we certainly need to have those kinds of discussions. But the current situation, whereby DFO just offloads costs arbitrarily and says “We won't give you a fisheries management plan if you don't pay for this”, is unacceptable.