Thank you, Chair.
I must say to everybody, members of Parliament and ministers and even the people fishing, that the east coast fisheries is really acronym-heavy. I'm trying to catch up on all these acronyms, being from the Yukon, where we have a couple of simple ones.
Having said all that, we heard Mr. Ball, I believe, talk of the need for knowledge based on hard science, but then he made an appeal for the consideration of traditional knowledge. Speaking more from our more terrestrial-based background in biology, in Yukon we encompass traditional knowledge with our science, but more for land-based species. For the east coast fisheries, there's a bit of a challenge between the demand for hard science and the need for traditional knowledge. We reach an agreement quite well when the two match, but as soon as science says something that doesn't quite jibe with traditional knowledge, the locals will reject the science. Science will equally reject traditional knowledge, because it sees traditional knowledge as self-serving for the industry's own needs.
How responsive is the department to taking and absorbing traditional knowledge? How are we able now to incorporate it into the scientific body so that the two marry a little better. The example Mr. Ball gave was the increase in the cod stocks pushing shrimp into a different water column. Are we recognizing that, and is the science saying, okay we can take that information and start to deploy our research-gathering capabilities consistent with what we're hearing from the people who are actually working in the fisheries?