Thank you, Mr. Chair.
There was talk earlier about all the things we needed to do to have strong enough measures to curb the whale deaths and not hurt our markets and our relationship with the Americans.
In 2018, the first year, from April 28, an entire static area was going to be closed to fishing. In 2019, the measures were relaxed and the static zone was reduced by 63%. In 2020, there was no longer a static zone, and there were dynamic zones thereafter. In 2021, there were again a few changes here and there.
What makes you say that we can't still relax the measures in a very responsible way? If my colleagues around the table would look at the briefing paper that we received yesterday from the Library of Parliament and look at the map from this year, they would see that the Gulf of St. Lawrence was virtually closed to fishing.
I know that the crab quotas have been met for the most part, but what makes it very difficult is all of this uncertainty that it creates, early on and during the season, both for the fishermen and the plant employees and the communities.
What makes you think that we couldn't relax the measures even more to give these people a bit of a break and have a somewhat more normal season, while protecting the right whales?