I will not give my opinion, but I will give what's done in the U.S., which I think makes a lot of sense. When a stock is rebuilding and there's uncertainty as to where the stock is, as there always is, and there's uncertainty as to how much we should take, as there always is—there's a range, and 3,000 to 12,000 is a large range, which tells me as a scientist that there's a lot of uncertainty—they always go with the lower band by law. This is because the lower band provides a buffer against uncertainty, particularly for rebuilding stock. Rebuilding stock is a patient who is healing, and you want to put as little pressure as humanly possible in order to come back as quickly as possible to a biomass where it can be fully exploited again. I would agree, based on the U.S. position on this, and the U.S. existing law and practice, that it's a good idea to go with the lower band for rebuilding stocks.
Again, this is actually something that will come up in Canada very soon, because the northern cod stock in Newfoundland is starting to rebuild, after almost 20 years of doing almost nothing. We see an increase from 1% to 2% in the biomass, so the question is, do we start to fish again? I brought this up with the minister this morning, and she said “No, we won't”. I hope she will stick with that, because there will be tremendous pressure to take whatever is produced as surplus every year and have it exploited directly. That's a very bad short-term strategy. The appropriate long-term strategy is to have it rebuild to the biomass that provides maximum yield, or an additional buffer against climate, above that, and then proceed. I hope that's being done.
But it will be politically very contentious. I think it's something that needs to be on the radar, that as these stocks rebuild, it's a good-news story but it doesn't mean we can go back to fishing them full-scale again. I've seen the increases in the 3M cod in the assessment, and it looks very good, I agree. It makes me happy, because it's a success story, but it doesn't mean that we should go ahead and fish it full-scale.