Fisheries committee  The Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association is pleased to present on this topic of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. We thank the committee chair and the fisheries committee for today's opportunity. I would like to outline the views of our association, in addition to potential remedies to this serious topic.

Fisheries committee  I think we know it's a historic arrangement. Our question for the minister was really quite simple: With the new partnership, would there be any changes that would be outside of a share purchase? Those are the kinds of questions that we're wondering about, and we have not received responses to a number of them.

Fisheries committee  I think it goes back to.... It was a significant deal. It involved a partner from the west coast, too, so it was a significant consolidation of east coast and west coast companies. There have been pretty basic questions, and I guess where our frustration has been is that maybe they all have simple answers, but we can't seem to get answers to some of these questions.

Fisheries committee  Yes, we'd be glad to do that, Mr. Morrissey.

Fisheries committee  I'd say the short answer to that is no, we don't. Our colleague, Jim McIsaac, on the west coast, can speak to very specific situations in terms of ownership being basically traced back to foreign ownership of the Canadian resource and controlling that resource. We really need to protect our food source on behalf of Canadians.

Fisheries committee  Sure. I'll go first. I just want to loop back to a point that Melanie made earlier. I believe she said $1.2 million but meant to say $1.2 billion, which is the threshold before the purchase of some of these [Technical difficulty—Editor] the full breadth of the federal government analysis.

Fisheries committee  Yes. Currently they would be in compliance. That's the concern. You get that total sum—and Keith can speak to this better than I can—and sometimes they're big purchases, or you hear quietly that five or six independents have been bought up, and all of a sudden you're dealing with a pretty big concentration in the marketplace.

Fisheries committee  I certainly think that would be a good start. We want to be careful about saying that every situation is bad, because it isn't. At the other end, though, there are areas of concern. It really needs to be followed up. This is one of the primary areas we're working on with DFO on the enforcement side to make sure they go through enough steps to identify the money.

Fisheries committee  Certainly there's the difficulty of newer and younger people getting into the fishery. A lot of times the sale of a fleet can be dictated by the company that's financing that fleet in the back scene there. That's one of the biggest ones. As I alluded to earlier, we want to make sure there's always healthy competition out there on the wharf.

Fisheries committee  As I said earlier, we are still working closely with DFO. There were a couple of areas that we were still talking about when it went to second reading. Then the final language came out. I would stay it's still a work in progress. As everyone on this committee knows, the fisheries escalated in value quite a bit over the last few years, so we always have to be diligent to make sure that the current regulations are enforced to the letter of the law and that any areas that we can shore up with perhaps some more policy information—

Fisheries committee  The problem is that they are driven for a profit, and the resource is for offshore sale. We need a healthy balance. I guess I want to reiterate that the inshore sector is not averse to corporations. It's just that, with the rapidity and the scope of these takeovers and buy ups of small operations—Martin was going to highlight another situation in Canada—it's fairly problematic.

Fisheries committee  We're always worried about the resource. I think what happens is that if a company comes in and overpays—and it could be for several years, if the long game is to take control of a market or gain a large market share—that starts to reduce the competition on the wharf, because the boats get lost to the bidder paying significantly more.

Fisheries committee  Again, we leave it up to DFO to make sure companies are following the rules, not just inshore but midshore and offshore. As organizations, we're always watching that. Certainly some of the offshore fleets, for some of the stocks, mackerel, for example, we have big concerns that too many of the big fleets are taking the majority of the resource out.

Fisheries committee  The other part of that, and Keith alluded to it earlier, is that I think every harvester wants healthy competition on the wharf. If it's too minimal, that's not a healthy situation. [Technical difficulty—Editor] everybody in the supply chain has to make money. I think, when you have a scenario where a company that's seeking a resource, and they may have an offshore licence, comes into the inshore and perhaps overpays what the market can support, usually there's a price to be paid.

Fisheries committee  Can you repeat that, please?