Mr. Chair, I do not need to look up the numbers in the budget estimates for the hon. member. He can do that.
We just had department officials before the committee answering questions pertaining to the estimates, so those numbers are all publicly available. I do not have them off the top of my head. I do remember, however, in the committee that there were not very many questions from the opposition members directed at the officials regarding scientific spending. I can only assume, therefore, that the members of the opposition are satisfied with the money that is spent on the fishery.
I do not quite understand what he is asking so far as the lobster fishery is concerned because it is a different fishery altogether. We have seen a change in the science when it comes to the escape mechanism in traps and so on. These things were actually rejected when science was put forward saying to the fishing community that they needed to increase the minimum size.
It is no different than when I was a fisheries technician. We looked at slot sizes for walleye. I worked for several years on a walleye minimum size experiment. We collected the information. We tagged walleye. Doing a market capture experiment is the way we would estimate the biomass. With that experiment we would run into a lot of frustration with anglers and we would run into frustration with commercial fishermen.
Years after this decisive action was taken as a result of the information we gathered, we have much more productive fisheries now in Alberta. We have much larger fish. We protected the reproductive stock.
That is what we have done with the lobster as well. We have increased the carapace sizes in the various lobster fishing areas to make sure that the right size lobster is being harvested, that there is enough biomass there to reproduce. The same thing needs to happen with the crab fishery as well. We need to have enough females there to ensure that the stocks can continue on in the future.
We have seen a decline. It seems completely normal to me. The year 2005 was the peak year and on a 10-year cycle that would mean that we are about halfway through the very bottom of the trough. It is not expected that we are going to come up, as I said in my speech, until 2012, which means that a competent minister, such as the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans of this government, has to take the measures that are appropriate for conserving the fish stocks for the future.