We are greatly concerned about the situation of salmon in Quebec and in the Atlantic provinces.
The minister has established the advisory committee. She has announced it, in any case. We are seeing reductions, particularly in the southern end of the range. I should point out again that it's the Province of Quebec that establishes the rules in Quebec. We establish the management regime elsewhere in Atlantic Canada, but we work closely with Quebec, and Quebec representatives will be connected to the committee to make sure that we have a “pan” approach with respect to those things.
They're being asked to look at issues around predation, mortality at sea, habitat situations, habitat assessment, at whether we have the right management rules in place.... It's a complex set of issues that we need to look at. There are hundreds of individual runs on different rivers from Labrador to Newfoundland to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.I., and Quebec. They all have unique circumstances. We have counting fences and we have what we call index rivers. We're able to see trends from year to year on many of them. We're seeing some signs that really concern us as well; hence the establishment of this committee.
What the minister has asked this group to do is to look at those issues, at what the historical trend has been, what the science tells us and does not tell us, what questions we still have to ask, what the issues are around predation, around seals, around striped bass—those types of things—and then provide advice to the minister on further research but also on management measures. Should we move to catch and release everywhere for a period of time? Should we be closing some rivers? What management measures should we be taking?
The department is taking it seriously. Last year we decreased the retention numbers; in other words, you can't catch and keep fish in many areas in which we used to have retention. We closed a couple of rivers that were previously opened. Part of it is what we need to do from a management perspective and part of it is what we need to do to make sure that this is healthy long term and that we have a healthy salmon fishery for the next generations. They are looking at both of those things, and the department is intimately involved.