Mr. Speaker, I never said that under the old act the government did not have responsibility over the fishery. In fact, the minister of fisheries has always retained ultimate responsibility for the management of the fishery.
What I meant to say was that in the old philosophy of management, the government was the sole entity that accepted responsibility for the fishery. Very often, the stakeholders in the industry deferred to the government to make the final decisions on the quotas.
We saw examples of this on the east coast with overfishing, with high grading, with improper mesh size. Nobody was willing to be accountable for the fact that those things were taking place. The government was unable to enforce the sanctions in the act because there was not a shared responsibility for managing the resource.
That is the new change in philosophy the government is introducing with this fishery. Fishermen have to be responsible for the conservation of the resource. They have to share ownership of that responsibility with the government. That is the philosophy that we are trying to put forward.
I believe that fishermen are happy to accept the responsibility provided they are fully involved in the partnership we are trying to create. That will be the challenge the minister of fisheries will have in implementing these new provisions.