In that component of management, it's about managing and monitoring the access during fisheries.
In the nineties there was still abundance—not as much as there was in the seventies and eighties, but still lots for us, for recreational, for sport and for commercial fishing. We were working with our citizens, who were transitioning from a time when if we were hungry, we would go out and fish for the table, to lesser runs, especially the Early Stuarts. That's when they started to decline, so we had to really monitor ourselves. We did it effectively by working with people, with fishers, with communities, but now DFO's management approach is to charge as many of us as they can. If we don't plead guilty, it takes five to seven years in court to finally come to whatever the decision is by the court. That's, by default, DFO's approach on management now: tying us up in court. We lose our jobs. We don't want to say we're guilty because we're not guilty, so we have to keep going to court. It's hugely problematic.
They take our boats, our trucks. They take everything from us, whereas when recreational fishers and others are caught, they don't do that.