Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Commissioner, maybe I can carry on where I left off, as a concrete example. Again, it's through one of these great, marvellous things we call “Order Paper questions” in the House of Commons, whereby MPs get to ask questions and sometimes get responses.
One response I got recently was on science data related to Canada's most lucrative fish stock, the lobster fishery in the Maritimes. It's broken up into various fishing areas, as you may know, called LFAs—lobster fishing areas. This summer, DFO granted an increase in quota. The only place where there's a quota on lobster is in the offshore, where Clearwater owns all eight licences and has a monopoly in an area three times the size of Nova Scotia. DFO increased the quota by 7,200 tonnes.
I asked for the science behind that increase in quota. I asked for the science for all the LFAs in the Maritimes. I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that the answer was, “We don't have any science data on that. We rely solely on catch data.”
Do you think, in setting an integrated fisheries management plan, that the only thing DFO should rely on is catch data?