Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of you as fisher people for coming in today.
Your testimony is very interesting. The more we hear on this file, the more interesting it gets. It's very valuable towards making our recommendations.
As I understand it, I don't know if the halibut fishery was the first fishery to move under an ITQ system or not. You can inform me of that afterwards. I understand that part of the reason for going in that direction was for fishermen's safety. In the previous system, the first out and first back in basically got the highest value for their catch, so fishermen were going out in unsafe conditions and so on. By bringing in the ITQs they had the ability to go out at any point when the weather was better, safer, under different conditions. Those ITQs were originally established based on the previous catch per harvester, and then they became transferable.
Have I described how we got into that system fairly closely, or is it different from what I have understood?
Mr. de Greef, would you like to start?