Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To our witnesses, thank you very much for appearing before us. We don't have a huge amount of time for questions, but thank you for your input and your opening remarks.
We will hear more from Mr. Rhyno later on. He was included in the original list of witnesses--in the original motion that called this committee to study this issue. I understand that he's prepared to come to Ottawa now so we can hear from him directly.
I want to delve into it with Mr. Gardner. We have a couple of options here, I guess. We can either try to elucidate from the meeting of the minds what was the intent or understanding of parties from 2004-05 to 2009 based on the test of a reasonable person; or we can simply test the actual management, the final decision from Minister Regan, that was set in place from 2005 until 2009.
You could argue that there weren't two groups or three groups; there were actually four groups. There were the traditional fishers who had longstanding access. There were the aboriginal first nations that had their temporary access made permanent--albeit very succinctly done for a very special and unique purpose, a communal purpose, for the benefit of those nations--as per the Marshall decision. The third group was the core company fleet. The fourth group was the actual individual temporary licence quota holders--the individual fishermen who assembled those licences.
But the issue here, the former has minister decided, is that for the purposes of administration there will be two groups. For the traditionals and the first nations, while the purposes of their licences were very distinct, unique, and different from each other, the actual administration of the licence conditions was almost identical—that's a fair statement, isn't it, Mr. Gardner? For the non-traditionals, the core company fleet, from the groundfish displaced fleet, their licences were somewhat different.
The point is that there are only two sets of licence holders per se: the traditional aboriginal, and the core company fleet. But they are licence holders. The plan of the minister says, and I'll quote directly from the plan: “When the TAC reaches 9,700 mt the distribution of quota will be calculated as follows. The permanent licences existing prior to 2005”--that would make up the traditional fleet plus the aboriginal first nations--“will equally share 50% of the TAC and all licences converted to permanent status in 2005 will share the remaining 50%.”
In the test of a reasonable person, how would someone interpret that any differently than that 50% of the quota, once it reaches 9,700 tonnes, would go to the traditional and aboriginal fleet licences on an equal basis? And since there are no individual licences issued to all 650 or 300, there are approximately 40 licences. But there are licences—the key term here is “licences”. The other 50% of the quota will be issued to those licence holders.
How, as a committee, do we decipher what the meeting of the minds was on that? It seems pretty well spelled out in black and white what the minister's final intention was.
Could you offer some comments on that?