Thank you, Mr. MacAulay.
I wanted to respond to the question that because this has been going on for 15 years in salmon, and since 1997-98 in other fisheries, just because Larocque came down it was a big deal and we were just trying to accommodate ourselves. The reality is that it was a unanimous Federal Court of Appeal decision. Three of our senior judges in Canada said this was illegal. Despite that, the department authorized the harvest and sale of millions of dollars worth of fish in British Columbia. The fact that it was authorized pre-Larocque is really immaterial to when the fisheries took place. The fisheries took place after Larocque, in one case at least two months, in one case at least three months, and in the case of the herring money, the money was collected years ago.
We agreed to fund that fishery, $1 million worth of salmon. If we had not funded it, the department was saying you're not going to fish on $150 million worth of fish over here. Did we have a choice to catch $1 million worth of fish in return for a $150 million fishery? It's nice to call it voluntary, because we signed the papers, but tell me, did we really have a choice to sign the papers? The answer is no.
We have a lawyer working in our office, and every day he walked by the person who was administering that fishery and would ask how the illegal fishery was going. We all knew it was illegal. Everybody knew it was illegal. The department shouldn't have authorized it, but as fishermen we had no choice but to put up the money. I raise it today because we're still in the same box. The department is not doing the work necessary to rebuild this run. They're telling us this year our harvest rate is going to be very, very low because they don't have money to spend on it. Four years from now we're not going to have a fishery because they're going to let the fish spawn into the lake this year. It needs to be dealt with now, and I fully support what the other fishermen are saying.
We need the department to commit to all the science that was done pre-Larocque. It needs to be funded now.