Finance committee  I'll echo what Mitchell and Leonard just mentioned. On several fronts the current programs are not adapted to the fishery. One good example is the fact that many fishermen have family members as their crews, so the program for wage subsidies, which is an important one, is not accessible to them.

Finance committee  I'll answer as Ms. Sonnenberg did, yes and no.

Finance committee  Specifically about the programs that have been announced now, no, we were not .

Finance committee  Thanks again, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to speak today, and to the whole committee for also agreeing to this. The Maritime Fishermen's Union represents over 1,300 independent inshore owner-operators in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Since its creation in 1977, the MFU's mission has been to represent, promote and defend the interests of inshore fishermen and their communities in the Maritimes.

Fisheries committee  I think that the science has been pretty decent with regard to putting in the effort to try to understand what's going on with the population in the last five or six years. The main reason for that was probably the pressure coming from the salmon associations—the salmon fishermen and anglers.

Fisheries committee  As an association, and with some of our other partner associations in the gulf, we are really pushing for more ecosystem-based approaches to science and what's going on with climate change and the interrelationships between these species. I can go on with a huge list of examples here, starting with the situation with whales that we had in the past two years.

Fisheries committee  I think I apparently didn't explain myself clearly. Bycatch for gaspereau fishermen is something that our members have talked about, and have spoken about that as an option to DFO several times in the past few years. However, that was considering the fact that the striped bass population was on the constant upswing.

Fisheries committee  That is my perspective on it, yes, the direct full impact.

Fisheries committee  In our case, we do not collaborate in terms of giving out work or working with DFO on the species. We have some other priorities, but we are following the file. We are following where DFO is going with it. As I mentioned earlier, if there were potential for a commercial fishery, we'd be the first ones hopping on it, right?

Fisheries committee  It's mostly taken into account when it comes time to devise studies to try to figure out if what the fishermen are saying is the truth in terms of scientific data or analysis.

Fisheries committee  That's a tough question. We've been asking that for 60 years. I think we can't underestimate the need for good science in any good decision-making system. We've seen over the years that sometimes we have really good science that is done, and when it comes down to...because these are all within DFOs different departments.

Fisheries committee  Sure. A big part of the information comes from our fishermen. It is verified in the sense that they do open up some of the fish they catch in their traps to see what they're eating. The most important predator for lobster, for instance, is actually the sculpin. It's a bottom-dwelling critter that is a stalker.

Fisheries committee  It is perception, Robert. We've been waiting for some DFO data on that fact to try to dispel these myths. In the last few years, studies have looked at the stomach contents of striped bass. As I mentioned earlier, they are an opportunistic species; they can eat pretty much anything they can wrap their mouths around, and they've got pretty big mouths.

Fisheries committee  No. Our main focus in the past 15 years in doing research on lobster settlement.... On PEI they're using these settlement index traps and in New Brunswick they're using scuba diving to settle sites for lobster. We've never seen a decrease in lobster settlement throughout this period.

Fisheries committee  In my case, if we had not seen a decrease in the striped bass population like the one we've seen in the past two years, I would probably say that we could start experimenting with a commercial fishery. With the numbers we're seeing—around the 300,000 units level—and with the stability of the stock not being certain, I would not recommend a commercial fishery.