Madam Chair, I want to note that our minister has only been in office for two years. With the crisis in the price of lobster last year, I can understand her reasoning for not wanting to hit the boom on small crab as well. Even though she was told about the biomass, she listened to the fishers that time.
Access and allocation decisions are always very controversial, even more so when new entrants are added to a fishery. In 1995 there were 62 licences, regular and temporary, in zones 23 and 24. When the Liberal Party left office in 2006, there were 111 licences in total in these zones. That is an increase of 49, which would have been quite a heavy burden on that zone.
Could the member opposite comment on the merits of the Liberal policy that saw an increase of nearly 80% in these zones over that period of time?