Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Some things that we've done with respect to trying to work with the province on dock management.... The dock management plan was very significant for us to work on because of the number of docks in our swiya and inlet was having a huge impact on our food security. We had access to so many different kinds of food with respect to clams, oysters, seagrass and herring eggs; I could go on and on. We've lost that access to that. We worked on the dock management plan for over 40 years and that was only one step.
We knew that we had to address the docks, but we understood that we also have to address the derelict boats. That has not been something that's just all of a sudden occurred. Our ancestors and our predecessors have been working on it and trying to work with different levels of government on how we can address it. For the most part, we've left it to the federal government to address it. We've expressed our concerns, frustrations and how it's impacted our community, families and food security.
We're at a point where we want to work with you. How can we address this?
We've worked very hard with the Province of B.C. to address dock management. We could see that it was struggling to address it on its own, so we came in and provided assistance in that. As indigenous people, the most important part of our role is to secure all of the environmental impacts that affect our community. It goes from the water, to the land, to the forest, to the ocean, to the lakes and to the rivers. In every area, we're trying to address anything that has an impact.
Right now, one of our biggest impacts is with respect to the derelict boats and it's impacting our food security. We've been working on it diligently with DFO. We've had staff who are working with them, trying to address it and come up with solutions. I think we've kind of hit a wall where we don't know how much further we can go.
What we're saying is that we want to move forward with you. How can we help get this addressed?
We're looking at, how did this occur? What are the impacts? What can we do to fix it and how do we set up prevention?
That is the key thing here, I think. It's prevention. We need to stop what's occurring, but we also need to put something in place that looks at how we can prevent this from continuing. What kinds of things can we do together?