The Regroupement des pêcheurs professionnels du sud de la Gaspésie had always supported the development of an exploratory fishery, provided it was carried out in an orderly and unhurried way. That's one of the first recommendations we made in our document. It's unfortunate to note today, however, that the minister issued exploratory fishing licences in a commercial fishing area where the resource was known to exist. Ultimately, what this did was to create competition between exploratory fishers and commercial fishers in a location where licences are very expensive. It's unfair competition when some fishers buy their licence while others get it for free, even though all of them are operating in the same environment.
This creates a really bizarre situation that's not good for the fishers or anyone interested in buying a licence, since there is no way of knowing what direction the department will take when it issues future licences. Will it grant exploratory fishing licences in other areas and destroy the market, in other words, undermine the practice among fishers of selling licences to each other, with one coming in while the other goes out?
These are things we have to think about now, since we can't trust the future to Fisheries and Oceans Canada.