I absolutely agree that the minister has to put into effect a verbal commitment. It's a challenge, because the status quo has been a heavy industrial driver, and it has been to our detriment.
You brought up the issue of herring, which is a main keystone species, a forage fish, a feeder fish for salmon. If you look at what's going on in British Columbia with herring, it's very similar to salmon. The herring have collapsed on Haida Gwaii. The north coast is in jeopardy. The gulf is questionable. There are no more herring on the west coast of Vancouver Island, which is the main food for both salmon and the orca, and that is on the watch of DFO.
We had to, basically, take direct action and occupy a Department of Fisheries and Oceans office because the herring biomass had collapsed in our territorial waters for six years. Finally when it started to come back a little bit, they wanted to have a commercial fishery. We said, “No, you cannot do that. You have to give the herring an opportunity to rebuild.” Look at what happened in the Atlantic. We took it right down to the last cod. When are we going to learn? We have to do things differently.
The other thing is that, yes, I believe the indigenous people are the voice of reason in this deliberation, but we have.... It's massive, because we're dealing with transboundary issues. We're dealing with Alaska and Oregon. Salmon don't know national or international boundaries. We have to work collaboratively so that the salmon can have a fighting chance.
The Minister of Fisheries has to show leadership and courage, and be able to hold back the line and hold salmon as the priority, not only the economic interest. That approach and that business model has not served us well. It's been 100 years, and we have seen an absolute destruction of salmon.
We have over 20 salmon-bearing rivers in our territory, and last year we had six salmon return in one river. It's just like when the inshore cod fishery was saying in the Atlantic, “There's no cod here,” but DFO was saying, “No, our computer-generated model says that there's this biomass.”
The people who are living there, the local knowledge keepers, are the ones who should be advising this process. That's the point.