Hi. I'm Bernie MacDonald and I'm the president of the Port Morien, False Bay Fishermen's Association and I'm also a member of the Area 23 Snow Crab Advisory Board.
First, I'd like to thank the committee for coming. It's a good opportunity for us to be able to talk. But I also want you to know that I'd much rather be out fishing today. I don't like being in here doing this in a short season, but it's very important to us.
My colleagues have pretty well taken care of the sharing arrangement. I want to talk about DFO's much talked about and touted co-management of resources.
There is no co-management as long as the minister can change a plan that's been in effect for four years without consulting the full fleet; as long as a bureaucrat in Halifax can write a briefing note that the advisory board is not allowed to see--no matter how much we ask for it; and as long as an advisory board for a fishery requests the minister to come down and meet with them and for a year she never even dignified it with a response. She never even said no; she just never came. The same minister got on the media two or three times saying everybody was happy with the sharing formula except a small minority of the fleet, 600 core fishermen. I don't know how anybody can call that a small minority.
So until there are some changes in DFO and the way they work with fishermen, the way they communicate, this is what we're going to have, and it's just getting worse.
That's pretty well everything I've got to say.