Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It was mentioned earlier by one of our colleagues, about streamkeepers and auxiliary, and the influence of volunteers. Particularly in our area, with habitat, we have a lot of people involved in the streamkeeper program and in stewardship programs. I hope we'll see everything done to support and maintain those budgets for these groups. They are concerned about cutbacks, or at least they're all worried about it, anyway.
The question I have picks up on what my colleague talked about, and I'm sure he wants to go there again. That was about sport fishing. Certainly in my riding it's a big, big industry, and I think they often feel under-represented.
The highest value, the Alberni Valley sockeye run, for example, had a huge sport fishery because of the proximity to a large urban area and access to marinas, and so on. But they often feel that they're low on the totem pole, if I can use that analogy. They're in competition with other fisheries in getting access to that resource.
Since they are high value, I would hope that we've recognized this. So I wonder, if we're going to have competition on the resource and we have a small number of seiners who come in and pretty well clean out the resource in a few days in a fishery like the Somass River fishery in the Alberni Inlet, why we wouldn't tip the scales. If you're going to buy people out to get them off the water, why wouldn't we get rid of the seiners, who scoop the entire resource, and allow the trollers and the sport industry, which really is the public access?
Most people access through the sport recreational fishery. That's the way the public accesses the fishery. Why wouldn't we tip the scales in that favour, that if we're going to buy somebody out, get rid of the seiners and allow the sports fishermen and the trollers, which support families and sustain communities, to get a greater emphasis in the fishery?