I would like to thank Ms. Dansereau for appearing at committee today. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
I look at this as an opportunity for the committee to get to know you a little better and for you to get to know us. Most times we're fairly civil to one another and the committee doesn't work too badly, but we never miss an opportunity to take a shot at the other team, so to speak. I wouldn't want to miss mine this morning. I do congratulate you on your new position, and I'm sure that bringing a fresh face to DFO, with all respect to Mr. Bevan and Mr. Hegge, is not a bad thing.
I have to pick up a little on the point that Mr. Byrne made on the WTO. I would expect that you would find it refreshing that finally we have a minister in charge of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans who has taken an issue that the Liberals hid very successfully for five years--and I realize you can't comment on politics and I appreciate that--and made sure no one knew who was at the WTO, and finally has allowed the sun and the air of the light of day to flow upon it. We now can actually do something about it, because it is a very important issue to all of us, on both coasts.
I'm sure Mr. Stoffer will get his press release out immediately on the three e-mails that he gave you today and be able to say that he has passed them right off and now they're looked after, and I appreciate that. But I do have two questions that have bothered me for my ten years as a parliamentarian, ones that have not been answered yet by the department or any government. I was hoping we would see some of this in the Fisheries Act, and it's not there. And that is, how we deal with the question of boat length and the fact that boat length no longer is there for safety reasons. It was an artificial measure put in to control the catch. Now that we've gone to ITQs, everything is in a quota system except the lobster fishery, and that is partially in a quota system because it's limited by the number of traps.
On the boat length, I have fishermen fishing out of Riverport, fishing out of small harbours in southwest Nova Scotia, who fish off of Georges Bank. They're out 180 miles offshore. There's something wrong with doing that in a 37-foot boat, because you can't have your lobster licence transferred from that 37-foot boat to a 45-footer or even a 50-footer. That's a safety issue that really I would like a fresh set of eyes to have a look at and maybe do something about.
The other thing that the ITQ system brought in was the ability to sell fish. We have far too many former fishermen who have used it as a retirement system, who no longer fish. Many of them don't even own a boat, have no intention of fishing, and yet they have 20 tonnes of haddock quota or they have cod quota and they're selling that quota to fishermen who want the fish. Those are issues we've been grappling with. I think the former government grappled with them. I know that the officials grapple with them. But we really do need to do something about that. And I realize that's not as simple as saying this is what we'll do tomorrow.
Do you have any thoughts on those two issues?