Thank you for the answer.
I will switch to another area, marine protected areas. I'm sure you've been part of some of the international conferences where the government is promoting 25% by 2025 and 30% by 2030. I recently, in the last few months, attended a meeting, a consultation with the fishing industry in eastern Nova Scotia, about the proposed marine refuge off the Scotian shelf.
DFO science said that the reason they were proposing this was to protect a particular type of Gorgonian coral that exists on the edge of the shelf in that area where they have a very robust halibut fishery, and it would potentially mean the end of that halibut fishery.
When I asked the scientists if they had specific data on the level of coral development in that area over time, say, the last decade, and whether it had been going higher or lower in that area and, if it had been depleting and been affected negatively, whether they could draw a direct cause to fishing, climate change or others issues of storms, they referred me to the science, generally, that they had. I looked at it, and it had absolutely no science on that geographic area. It was a general bit of science with regard to Gorgonian coral and the effects of trawling, which isn't done in this area, and that type of thing.
I'm worried that DFO is proposing that we shut down large areas of our commercial fishery for this artificial goal in marine protected areas based on absolutely no science on the effects of fishing done in these specific areas.