Fisheries committee  Nicole can respond to this statistical question, but as far as the issue around interpretation of the regulation is concerned, certainly once industry flagged its concern, we did advise the minister. She is aware, and you are aware, that there is a news release responding to the

Fisheries committee  I haven't thawed a tub of prawns myself—

Fisheries committee  Right, so you would need to know the size of the tub. Is it one pound? Is it 10 pounds? What temperature is it frozen at? What's the exterior temperature? What kind of thawing process are you going to use? Are you going to use water? Are you going to use boiling water? To say how

Fisheries committee  I'm not waffling. I'm just trying to point out that there are a number of different factors.

Fisheries committee  I think you are raising some excellent points around standardization of tubs, and I think that should be part of the future protocol.

Fisheries committee  There's no question that people are upset—

Fisheries committee  I would say that the issue was raised and that within two months it was resolved, and the fishery hadn't opened yet. The fishery is now open—

Fisheries committee  I wasn't part of that meeting, but I can ask Neil to describe—

Fisheries committee  Well, I can't.... I'm attempting to answer the question, but I assume you would like to hear it directly rather than second-hand.

Fisheries committee  We work with industry all the time; there's a back-and-forth about this. If industry has concerns, we are responsive to them. We want to work with them and we want to have a sustainable fishery. In that way, I'm not hearing any concerns that we haven't been consulting enough with

Fisheries committee  I'm hearing concerns about how the tubbing issue was raised, but in general, our advisory processes with industry are rigorous. We have a regular process that we follow and we have an integrated fisheries management plan that we develop every year. We consult on the content of th

Fisheries committee  What I'll say is that we haven't banned tubbing. We have agreed on a protocol to inspect products to make sure that size limits are respected. We believe in having a sustainable fishery, and size limits are an important part of how we ensure conservation and manage for sustainabi

Fisheries committee  The concern over tubbing is about whether the product can be readily available for inspection. That's the concern. There's no concern about freezing prawns in sea-water, other than you can't see them to see if they're meeting the size limits. If you can find a methodology to asse

Fisheries committee  Again, it's not the tubbing. It's the size limits that we're trying to ensure. The issue with tubbing is that you can't readily inspect the product. If you can resolve that issue, then the package you put the fish or the prawns in is not a concern. It's about whether they're read

Fisheries committee  DFO intends to work with the industry to find ways to readily inspect product. Tubbing isn't banned. We just need to find a way to readily inspect the product.