It goes to the issue of viability. One of the concerns we had as a panel in developing the recommendations was that we knew the resource was heading for a decline. It was already under way and would bottom out and then increase in a few years. So I understood the minister's reluctance to implement the recommendations as framed. The panel report addresses the concern about the decline and what the optimal time might be. But it seems to me that selecting a relatively high quota level—9,700 tonnes—implies a concern for viability. If it doesn't ensure viability, it at least supports it.
As for the other issues around stability, there was a huge problem in this fishery before 2004. It had to do with the thresholds and the way they were triggered. There was pressure from one group to keep below the threshold and pressure from the other group to keep above it, or to get it up there to ensure participation. Settling these issues was one of the major reasons for the panel. In our view, the issues could best be settled by first eliminating all the labels, so that at some point a licence holder is a licence holder. A licence is a licence, and there are no distinctions. It makes no difference whether you were adjacent or non-adjacent, temporary or not, or this or that. Everybody is a commercial participant in this industry.
A mechanism for getting at that, and for achieving stability and viability, was to allow transferability and divisibility of the quota. This allowed people to trade. If you had a bigger boat, higher costs, you could buy quota to make your enterprise more viable. If you wanted to get out of the business, you could sell your quota. This device is more commonly used on the west coast, but there are several fisheries using it on the east coast as well. You have individual quotas, but there is transferability. This became a cornerstone of this set of recommendations. Viability would be there, and people could, with transferability, trade, buy, sell, and adjust to changes in quota over time.