Fisheries committee  I have one quick thing, Mr. Johns. It's from your last round, when we ran out of time. We do have.... Members have to be in good standing with the association, and the board would deal with something of the kind you alluded to earlier.

Fisheries committee  That being said, we reached out and we want to continue to do that dialogue. One thing that Chief Bernard said was that a real education process needs to happen for everybody to understand treaties and how they work, and rights and all those things. I can tell you that all of o

Fisheries committee  We would echo that response, and I think it's just human nature. Without information, people always assume the worst, so I think that's part of the challenge we're all going through now.

Fisheries committee  Certainly, we think that would be a positive step. We have no idea of what's in those plans. As as I mentioned earlier, when you're consistently running up to “we can't share this” and “we can't mention that”.... We get that to a degree, but that has caused some of the angst, for

Fisheries committee  We would say absolutely. Dialogue is always good, for sure.

Fisheries committee  I guess one last thing is that we're talking about everyone's livelihoods, and those are pretty important things.

Fisheries committee  Could I have the question repeated? I missed the first part of it.

Fisheries committee  Well, I guess our expectation would be that something comes out of this—that the fisheries committee, a vital committee, follows up, and that actions being spoken to or committed to are followed up. This was where a lot of the frustration in the groups over the past year came f

Fisheries committee  I think the frustration from our side has been that we've been dialoguing with some senior people in Ottawa on our concerns about the situation. Because it was in Southwest Nova Scotia, it was of great concern to everyone else. One of the things we were seeking was dialogue, and

Fisheries committee  I could speak to that. We were told that the mandate was for nation-to-nation negotiations. We were not considered a stakeholder and wouldn't be involved in any of those talks. Although we were told for a number of months that DFO would try to facilitate some dialogue with vario

Fisheries committee  I think one of the key issues we're dealing with right now is that we've been told by DFO that no new access would be created, which would typically be by more new licences being generated or by some other method. That's an issue. I'm not so sure “negotiation” is the right wor

Fisheries committee  Again, to go back to the discussion around the potential impact on the resource, I think a good way to look at it is to look at the cumulative effects or potential impacts on the resource. We need to look at it through that lens and have all harvesters involved with that kind of

Fisheries committee  Here I will allude to the recent Macdonald-Laurier Institute report that profiled some of the first nations communities that were fishing their licences. The proceeds from those licences were going back into the community and there were some real success stories. To me, there a

Fisheries committee  One of the ideas that's been put out there for some time now is that there would be a liaison between non-aboriginal fishing organizations and the negotiation table dealing with these kinds of issues and making our concerns known. It would obviously have to be a person of trust.

Fisheries committee  I just wanted to add—