The reconciliation agreement wants to put first nations people back on the water. In that area north of Vancouver Island to the Alaska panhandle, the areas of the eight nations that I work for, we need a transfer mechanism of the licences and quotas that are being held. What was negotiated with the Government of Canada was to use the marketplace. Other tools could have been used.
The Government of Canada could have expropriated and compensated, and then turned over, under an agreement, access to species. That's at the heart of the matter here. I'm appearing is because the market isn't working. The settlement funds that we have received to go into the marketplace would be chasing silly money. They wouldn't have the buying power. We want to see that changed, and we believe the owner-operator approach we've heard of from the east coast could do that.
The goal is to get first nations people fishing again. All of the communities that I work for used to have a small boat fleet. None of them do now. Children and teenagers access the water by water taxi, or they dangle their feet off a dock. They are not on platforms that were used to fish. That's what we want to restore. We want families to have the opportunity to fish again, as well as a fleet that would go ocean-wide and participate, probably with a lighter footprint in terms of impact than has been managed under DFO.