We certainly have seen ourselves that, as welcome as the influx of science money has been over the last few years, most of it has gone to ocean science and very little has gone to fisheries science. As I'm sure my colleagues will agree, stock assessment, evaluation of the risk and the risk mitigation that fisheries management undertakes are absolutely essential. We are seeing that the increased demand on science has grown exponentially. Much of this is regulatory and legislative, so it tends to bump regular stock assessments. Even if we need a stock assessment to meet a Marine Stewardship Council condition, there are so few staff able to work on these projects that, if a SARA or a COSEWIC comes up, the relevant people are taken off work for industry and directed to SARA work. That's only going to get worse with the fish stock provisions.
One of the recommendations we would like to see from this committee is the proper resolving of the stock assessment and science function. I think that's particularly critical given that we're seeing the retirement of many of the well-established stock assessment and technical people from DFO, replaced with recent graduates who have no experience, so there's no chance for mentoring and growing up into the stock assessment process.