Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to follow up, Josephine, something you referred to, and you referred to it as well, Norma.
You understood that there was an actual management plan, a “contract”, as you referred to it, from 2005 to 2009. Is that correct? I specifically want to zero in on Ms. Joan Reid's letter, dated February 18, 2009. It was addressed to all snow crab licence holders in crab fishing area 23. It reads much like a newsletter. It talks about different officials with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans being reassigned to different tasks. It talks about Tim Rhyno's licence, for example, and the minister's decision there. But it also specifically states—and you quoted this, Ms. Kennedy—that “It is expected that due to the strong recruitment, a TAC exceeding 9,700 tonnes may be approved in 2009”. Just as an aside, I understand that 9,700 tonnes was a trigger point under the management plan to go to a revised share structure. The letter continued: “thus triggering the permanent 50:50% sharing arrangement recommended by the Advisory Panel on Access and Allocation in 2005”.
I really think this is relevant, because the senior area director for eastern Nova Scotia was informing the industry that a change was afoot, and that for the last four years when the management plan was put in place—not in 2009 but in 2005—there was a broad and general understanding, if not a specific one, as to exactly what that management plan was. It was a change--not the status quo, but a change to a 50-50 sharing split.
Ms. Kennedy, would you be able to explain whether there was an interpretation or understanding on anyone's part that the share structures would basically stay the same, or was Joan Reid seriously wrong in her judgment? Or was she correct in her judgment that for the last four years a management plan was in place, understood by all to be in place, and that a change would occur in 2009? From the date of this letter, February 18, 2009, when was the actual management plan announced for that particular year, indicating a change, if indeed it did occur?