Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.
While his announcement earlier this week has brought welcomed relief and hope to many fishing communities in Atlantic Canada, the minister will know that a potentially explosive situation is brewing in the snow crab fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
With the groundfishery there all but decimated, gulf fishermen without snow crab licences have watched with growing envy and frustration as a small group of snow crab fishermen do extremely well from their access to this now valuable and plentiful resource.
How is the fisheries minister proposing to address this glaring inequity and avert a crisis in the snow crab fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence?