Thank you, Chair.
There's been interesting testimony on science during this committee study. A number of common themes have been coming out, regardless of who the witnesses are, so I'll frame my question from this perspective. When the department and the minister increase quota, nobody questions the science—the fisher, nobody; you never hear a complaint. The science is fine. It's always focused on when there are too few fish for everybody to catch and it comes to dividing them up.
To Ms. Giffin and whoever else, I agree totally that the department could do a better job of including fisher knowledge in its decision-making process, but what information should the department use? I'll use a recent example from the closure of the gulf herring and mackerel. It depended on which group I was lobbied by. One group of fishers said somebody else should have been closed, and the next group said it should have been them. Each group that met with me had a different answer on who was causing the problem.
Ms. Giffin, on that particular fishery decision, did the minister miss something? Would the decision have been better if some knowledge you had could have been presented to her? What part of the stock assessment did the department get wrong in making the decision to advise the closure of the gulf herring and mackerel fishery?