Peter, I'll answer that question if you want.
I'm with the Area E Gillnetters Association, a salmon association on the Fraser River. We have a problem with a stock that was almost listed under the Species at Risk Act, but wasn't.
I did get some pictures. This is the lake where the fish swim and spawn. It's a very small lake, and heavily populated, as you'll see from the pictures, with boats, marinas, golf courses, and water parks.
The stock that goes in there is about 5,000 fish in a good year, swimming in a stock of 10 million to 15 million sockeye. The 10 million to 15 million run very healthy, but the small stock of 5,000 fish is unhealthy. So they need to do some rebuilding of the stock with some hatchery work, and some other stuff like that.
The government came back to us last March and said, well, if you guys don't come up with $500,000, you won't be able to fish on the big stock at a level that's appropriate. Last year, it represented somewhere between $100 million and $150 million in fishing opportunity to our fleet—and I'm speaking of the salmon fleet as a whole. So we fishermen agreed among ourselves that we didn't really have much of a choice between $100 million over here or in coming up with half a million dollars over there. So the government agreed to issue us what were called scientific permits, intended for scientific research.
In August, a full two months after the Larocque decision, a bunch of our seine vessels went fishing and caught $1 million worth of sockeye salmon, and went to the processors who paid the fishermen for fishing it. The processors then paid an association with the money. Then the association transferred the money over to another association, which was supposed to transfer the money to DFO, without going through Parliament for the appropriation process, to fund the hatchery and the other stuff to rebuild this particular run.
We're being told right now that unless we find a way to release that money—What happened is that our association clearly knew it was illegal and raised the thought, are our directors involved in this or complicit in an act that could either lead them to be sued or charged with some type of criminal conduct? We didn't know. So we wrote to DFO and asked if this was legal. The response was that the money had been frozen. The fish that should be being rebuilt right now are in danger of being released, where we know they're probably going to suffer nearly 90% mortality. And four years from now, we will have that $100 million or $200 million fishery with very little fishing in it—maybe there will be $10 million worth of fishing then.
And again, DFO is saying “Guys, find a way to get us some money”. The whole thing is very confusing. But certainly there was “Pay the bill, guys, or you're not going to fish”. That was very clear.