You mentioned the 63% quota reduction. The way our fishery is structured right now, if we were to have something of that size of a quota cut in our crab sector in this province, I can tell you we would be in serious trouble; as I alluded to, the crab has become the major species by which income is generated.
In terms of overfishing, we go back to the responsibility of science. We have DFO, who we hope would do the science. I don't know if anybody else has spoken about it here this morning, but certainly in this province we are questioning DFO around the amount of research capacity they have and the research they're currently carrying out. If there's an area where we do need more investment, it's on the research side.
People will fish within the quota that's allocated, but we want the decisions that are made to be made on good science. People in this room will tell you that some of the people who were harvesting turbot, for example, feel there's more room for increased quota of turbot. I spoke to people up on the northeast coast who were quite adamant about that. But it has to be based on science. Fishermen are saying, yes, it's there. But we need the science to confirm that, and then an increased quota means better revenue for some of the people who are here.
I'm glad to hear you mention the deckhands, because sometimes this is a group that is not heard about so much in the fishing industry. They and the plant workers have to be protected.
But I go back to the fact that there has to be shared responsibility in this province about where we're going to go with the structure of this industry in the future. We say we need fewer plants and we need fewer harvesters, and how we get there will unfold, I hope, through this MOU process.
Whether it's better to have the federal government, at the political level, involved at this juncture, I'm not certain, but I know one thing: from the province's perspective, we have got to come forward with our proposal, and by that I mean the FFAW, the ASP, and the provincial government. Then the ask that we bring forward would be that the federal government, we would expect, would be part of what we're bringing forward.