Fisheries committee  Well, then, we have a greater access and a larger number of people participating in a fishery. That takes more time, more effort, more equipment. Simply, it takes more dollars. Unless we have a plan in place to move forward so that we can enforce all fisheries equally, fairly and justly, then I think we're putting the cart before the horse, sir.

Fisheries committee  That is very simple. It would be another fishery, and if it's at another time of year, other than the commercial—

Fisheries committee  Yes, absolutely. We cannot proceed without that, because as I testified, in my experience in the FSC fishery, we've never been able to enforce it properly, and that's a disservice to the indigenous people and the people of Nova Scotia.

Fisheries committee  Ninety per cent of it is. We know that's the case through years of investigation, and there are a number of buyers in Southwest Nova who are buying lobster and haven't hidden it from any of their community members. They are buying it and selling it, and we've been trying to track it for years.

Fisheries committee  It was against the buyer.

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. McDonald and all the committee members. I appreciate your time.

Fisheries committee  It's paramount that we have a level of enforcement that allows officers to make sure they get out and collect the information. You were talking about the need for numbers and statistics. If we don't know what's coming out of the water and we don't know where it's going, we have inherent problems already.

Fisheries committee  I shared that story because it has a level of importance. It talks about the disregard for thousands of pounds of lobster that had a major value to the resource and to the industry—

Fisheries committee  Well, it's because it just goes to show you that the fishery in St. Marys Bay is unregulated, and our hands as DFO officers were tied because we were not allowed to do the necessary checks. We did a last-minute investigation. We did not have the time or the resources to complete the investigation to prove whether it was indigenous fishers who dumped the lobsters or the fish buyers who were buying the lobsters.

Fisheries committee  Yes, absolutely—

Fisheries committee  I would say that Melanie is on the right track. We can download 10 or 12 items or agenda topics that we'd like to have solved, but we have to deal first and foremost with the way in which the fishery is managed and the resource to do that. Coming together to talk with transparency and to have a dialogue has to come from the fishers, and it has to come from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Fisheries committee  I'm not sure exactly how much per day, but I know there is in excess of one million pounds or more per year coming out of there. I was in the middle of doing some investigations on exactly how much lobster was coming out. I had put a proposal through to our regional office that I wanted to go down and to check every vessel that came in.

Fisheries committee  I can only base it on my experience and the knowledge that I have. I know that this year—because I'm in touch with fishermen all the time—there were in excess of 3,000 traps removed from the bay that were supposedly involved in an FSC fishery. Now, we're supposed to have the understanding that there were 250 traps set for this moderate livelihood fishery to start.

Fisheries committee  That's absolutely incorrect. She had officers stand down from conducting a lawful enforcement of an illegal fishery. That is direct interference into what a fishery officer does. She has no authority to do that, by the way. She cannot. I've talked to some learned people. She has no authority to interfere in an enforcement operation by telling them to stand down.

Fisheries committee  Certainly in order to do the job effectively, we need more manpower. When it comes to resources, we need more capital to put into officers. When it comes to training, I think we're pretty well trained. However, if we don't have the resources—the boots on the ground, as it were—to monitor compliance and make sure that it exists within a fishery, then we're doing a disservice to the people involved in that fishery, whether they are indigenous fishermen or commercial fishermen.