Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question.
The impact was not only on fishermen; it was also felt by fish plant workers. A fish plant worker had only about four weeks of work. For the men and women working there, it was their livelihood. That is what really hurt the crab fishing industry.
At the same time, we have to look at how it could have been resolved. The department should have listened to the fishermen. I was speaking to some expert fishermen who had fished for many years, 20 to 30 years, and they knew what the Department of Fisheries was doing was wrong in closing it down to the amount of 8,000 to 9,000 metric tonnes.
The reason for that reduction was based on how one does the tests. Fishermen were telling the department that, but the department would not listen to them. Let us just imagine this: people would take their boats and nets and go out on the water to do the tests. It is not the same thing as looking in the cages themselves, where fishermen catch the crab. They would just take their boats and put their nets in the water, and after that they would pull their nets out to see if there were any crab in the sea.
The department official, who had no experience, would stop his boat, and the crabs were falling out of the net. When he pulled it out, there were no crab. Then the government decided to close it down. Fishermen were telling the minister and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans it was the wrong way to do it.
What did the Department of Fisheries and Oceans do? It completely refused to listen. This is what the fishermen are saying: “Listen to us”—