That's pretty good.
Thank you. It's great to be on this committee.
I'm from Cape Breton, and their biggest source of GDP is the fisheries in Cape Breton. We have a Veronika Brzeski. She does a lot of work with the area LFA27 MB and with the fishers. They've done work on eco-certification of lobsters under the Marine Stewardship Council. They're also looking at different uses of bait and handling of the lobsters. They're also doing some monitoring and activity around St. Ann's Bay, the new MPA dealing with halibut and other species.
They're doing a lot of work, but they were getting funding through fisher groups and also probably through ACOA. ACOA says that this is not really in its mandate and that they're doing such good work—and I think they're doing the work in conjunction with you guys, and you're using their data—that the funding should be coming from DFO.
I was pretty excited with our new budget and all this new money for research. I think it's good money spent by our federal government to have these independent groups getting the data, working with fisher groups, and bringing it together.
I know there's a lot of new research money and that it's focused on DFO employees, but is there going to be a chunk of that, or can you get a chunk of that, to get these independent groups to help you get your data and bring it to you for future analysis? It also gives the fishers in that area a sense that they're part of the solution and not part of the problem, I guess.