My comment is along the same lines as what Mr. Diotte said. I no longer attend meetings of the Rock Crab Advisory Committee. I participated for 10 years, but I decided to stop, because when you go to the meetings, you realize just how much control the traditional crab industry has over the committee and its decisions. If that is what you came to hear, well, I can tell you it is true. As far as I am concerned, it is primarily a political issue. Last year and the year before, despite the recommendations made by Canadian scientists, who are paid by the Government of Canada, the political party currently in office decided to maintain crab quotas at too high a level. This is what everyone had been saying and it was well understood by the traditional industry, the other industry, the Aboriginal industry and the people with temporary or permanent allocations, as well as other fishers.
In my opinion, that is a very serious weakness, and it has lead to the kind of disruption we are seeing today in the region. It is government weakness. Despite the fact that these scientists are paid with our tax money, the government completely ignored them and preferred to believe what a biologist paid by the traditional crab industry had been saying, particularly in 2009. That is what happened. They preferred to rely on an outside professional who was being paid by the traditional crab industry, rather than relying on the reports prepared by our own scientists. That was a very serious error.
We were in full agreement with what the scientists were saying. The quotas should have been cut four years ago to avoid the kind of disruption we are experiencing today. But, unfortunately, the political decision-makers did not listen to that advice, with the result that we are now facing a very serious situation. That is the problem. It is not because the crab stock disappeared; it is currently in a declining phase. We are seeing what is left of the crab stocks. Five or six years from now, we will be in a growth phase.
We surfed at the crest of the wave for a little too long, and allocated crab quotas that were too high every year. We artificially inflated what was there. It is always the same mistake, whether we are talking about herring or cod. It is a political decision that leads to mistakes. Why do we bother paying scientists, if we are not going to listen to them?