Fisheries committee  We've talked to the provinces—in my case, the Province of Newfoundland primarily—and our other offices have talked to the other provinces. There certainly has not been any approach by the provinces to ACOA to do something jointly. My understanding is that based on the assumptio

Fisheries committee  Well, they've left it out there. I guess we could react to that if we wanted to. Again, I'll go back to our point that given the way the university community and the fishing industry have found themselves, or found each other, the need to do this at that cost is, from our perspec

Fisheries committee  I'm not sure whether the term “illegal” is the best one to use. I guess what it boils down to is whether, given the choices for limited funding, this is one that you would want to make the choice to provide the funding to. It's not as much a legal issue, in my view, as it is...

Fisheries committee  As far as ACOA providing funding for innovation in Atlantic Canada is concerned, we do. We have programs providing that funding. We do it for very specific projects that have specific outcomes and partners and legal agreements, and those sorts of things. As for whether we control

Fisheries committee  Regarding the flexibility in our programming, there are a couple of things here. We have to deal with the programs that we have and budgets that we guess at. When we look at a program, like any department, it comes with terms and conditions as set out by Treasury Board. They turn

Fisheries committee  Thank you.

Fisheries committee  I guess, from ACOA's perspective, we shifted our focus in terms of how we deal with innovation six or seven years ago, when we established the Atlantic Innovation Fund. The Atlantic Innovation Fund has had tremendous take-up. It has been oversubscribed. We have a lot of very wor

Fisheries committee  With respect to the ambiguity around what notice we gave them, I suppose if somebody wanted to cast it that way, they could, but from our perspective--and I can speak first-hand to much of this--there was very little ambiguity in the discussions we had with the representatives of

Fisheries committee  The requirement for a sustainability plan was placed in the last letter of offer or the last contract we had with them. Prior to this, about three years prior.... Again, this issue of becoming sustainable, and ACOA's ability to carry on and do this forever, has been an issue for

Fisheries committee  Yes and no. In our letters of offer when we make a contract with somebody, we will say, “Here is a certain amount of money, which you can spend on certain things over a period of time.” When the period of time is over, the contract is over. So it just stops. It would be unusual a

Fisheries committee  I guess we grabbed it and ran with it for quite a while.

Fisheries committee  A couple of things have happened. The CCFI was established to link the fishing industry with the academic community, and over the years, that has happened. There has been quite a high degree of uptake between the industry and the academic community. They've done a number of proje

Fisheries committee  Thank you.

Fisheries committee  CCFI would have a relationship with DFO that does not involve financing. For the most part, the financing for CCFI came from ACOA. CCFI would have worked with DFO on specific projects. It may be that there is expertise at DFO that could be brought to bear on a project, as good as

Fisheries committee  The way our programs work is that they're for specific periods of time. There has to be a start, a time for conducting work, and an end. In the case of the CCFI, we've gone through that a number of times. We have now reached the point with the CCFI where we believe that the work