Fisheries committee  —to reduce it, yes. The quota stayed the same.

Fisheries committee  Yes, which you probably don't hear of too often, but that was an actual case—

Fisheries committee  —because of the observations on the water. In 2015, in the middle of our Marine Stewardship Council audit, a new set of conditions came across for mackerel because the quota got cut significantly. It's those types of things where I think the traditional and community knowledge could have had a better outcome for our industry.

Fisheries committee  I guess I was referring to some of the federal panels. They're just starting to come into place. For example, this weekend we present to a federal panel on marine protected areas in Moncton. Certainly, for a process to have integrity, you need to have people there who are respected and who represent different parts of the industry.

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Madam Chair, and members of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans for the invitation to present this morning. My name is Ian MacPherson. I am the executive director of the Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association. For those of you who are not familiar with the PEIFA, we have six local fishing organizations that are represented on our board of directors and form the backbone of our organization.

Fisheries committee  Yes, and I hope this answers it. You made some excellent points in the beginning that the fishery is important to the people who earn their living from it, and they want it to continue. If we haven't learned lessons from the crash of the cod, then shame on all of us. I think we have thousands of people who are working hard to prevent that.

Fisheries committee  They would probably be the best judge of that. We have a number of advisory boards and we make a point of inviting the indigenous communities to these meetings. Their attendance is optional. We also respect the fact that they are in separate negotiations with DFO on a number of files, which we generally aren't invited to.

Fisheries committee  That's something that should be discussed a little more in depth among organizations to come up with something that's workable.

Fisheries committee  It would be rushed.

Fisheries committee  Significant would certainly be the type of impact. Most of our fishery is inshore, so if something close were closed, it would have a dollar-for-dollar impact on what goes on in those communities or areas.

Fisheries committee  Understood. Thank you.

Fisheries committee  I want to interject and support what Melanie just said. A lot of it certainly centres around communication and more communication. One of the things that we as an industry may have to look at is having more multispecies working groups. I get it, and I'm not saying the current system is flawed, but we solve issues in snow crab, and solve issues in lobster, and solve issues in mackerel, but as we're seeing with the right whale situation, I think there is going to be a real necessity for multispecies to work together to find collective solutions to deal with this issue.

Fisheries committee  We understand this is an international program that Canada is getting more involved in. There is a learning curve for all sides. We're certainly understanding of that. As we alluded to earlier, it's really important that we get this right.

Fisheries committee  A few months back I attended a meeting in Halifax. It was around MSC certification. The certifying body out of Ireland was looking at making some changes. One of the things that did come up surrounded bycatch. It was interesting, because are there going to be MSC-related conditions that start to affect bycatch, and will that mean that certain areas or species that aren't our problem now could start being pulled into the mix in terms of how they're assessed?

Fisheries committee  One thing we need to point out is that generally we have two regions of DFO, one is the gulf region and the other is the Maritimes region. One of the things that Melanie pointed out is that at one meeting we heard there will be limited fishing in the MPAs, and then at another meeting we heard there would be no-fish zones in MPAs.