Thank you, Mr. Chairman, committee members.
We've talked about test fisheries. We've talked about stock assessment. The other aspects of fisheries management include—For example, in our fishery we've collected lots and lots of data with stock assessments, but that data needs to be analysed and reported on. That is also a really important part of fisheries management, because then you have exploitation rates and natural mortalities and all the other things to sustainably manage a fishery. Once the fisheries are sustainably managed, we also need to focus on maximizing the economic value of taking that precious resource and bringing it as a value to all Canadians.
Now, we talked about joint project agreements. I'll give you just a quick example, because I know we're constrained by time here. My fishery this year had to cancel its joint project agreement, not necessarily because of Larocque—because we didn't fund from fish, we paid everything over the last number of years directly out of our fishermen's pockets--but because we've been impacted by an illegal, unregulated, and unreported Russian fishery that has decimated our markets. So here you have a small, valued fishery that has 600 to 800 shore workers in Vancouver. And all our fishermen live in coastal communities along Vancouver Island and on the north coast, as well. And we were only able, in spite of all our efforts to fish—