Thank you very much, Peter. It's good to see you here. Also, thank you for your comments and support in relation to what we did for the sealers. You were quite open and vocal with that, and with your personal support. And thank you for your support of the lighthouse bill as it went through several phases. You solidly supported it right through the process. I appreciate that.
In relation to the shutdown of the chinook fishery, at this stage we don't know what effect it will have. We know what's going on in the U.S; we'll see what will come of it. There is no plan for compensation at this stage. Compensation is always the first thing that comes up whenever there's talk about any kind of downturn or whatever, and it's a slippery slope when you get into it. But we know people depend on it for a living, and sometimes you can mitigate in other ways. But you deal with what you have at the time you have it.
The far north access to turbot is probably becoming, as we say, an issue. Some time ago we did transfers between the fleet that was fishing.... Because of companies getting in or out of the fishery, there was movement back and forth of the large companies, as there always is within an existing quota. There was no disruption or change within the fleet sector, just movement within.
Nunavut was extremely upset. Newfoundland seemed to be upset. I cautioned them, because as it has been historically, it secured that the fish were caught by Canadians and landed in Canadian ports for the benefit of Canadians. Nunavut was upset because it thought that with any change whatsoever, all the fish should go to Nunavut.
Adjacency is a wonderful thing. It is one of the prime reasons we allocate resource. But historic dependence is also very important. If there is a resource that has been developed off British Columbia and somebody else gets the benefit, British Columbia is not going to be happy. They should be the prime beneficiaries.
One of the problems in the north is that they have this great resource of turbot and shrimp, and as we said earlier, they haven't got a wharf to land it on. What is happening, and you've been through this here at committee, is that a lot of that resource is sold in the water to other companies that provide minimal employment--I'm making the same arguments you've made over the years--and then they land it and transship it to other countries, in some cases going into markets duty-free, so we get no benefits except the royalties that are paid to a group.
I have concerns with that. Even though we have tried to maximize the benefits for the people of the north--there's no doubt about that--if we're going to take away something from other Canadians to give to foreign companies, I have concerns about that too. As we open up fisheries and the north has more access, we have to make sure that their people are the ones who benefit, not the Danish or the Finns or anybody else. I think you agree with that, because you've fought that battle for a long time.