Fisheries committee  And that's fine.

Fisheries committee  Sure. They started out as allocations. One of the objectives of the panel and one of the objectives of the minister in establishing the panel was to find ways of eliminating the instability in the fishery. Our approach to this was to do what we could to redefine the basis of participation of all the various participants.

Fisheries committee  Sure. On the first point, when we say there was no way of knowing how they would aggregate, whether five would come together and form a company, or 15, I think that's the point. Appendix B simply averaged it, and we had 10 or 12 per organization. The more important point is it didn't matter if it was five or 15 because each were taking in their own quota shares.

Fisheries committee  In response to the question about pricing, broadly speaking the industry ships to two markets: the United States and Japan. Others are very minor. The product is a commodity, first of all. There is really just one product: cooked, frozen crab sections. They find their way into the mid-range to low-end restaurants, food service.

Fisheries committee  I think it's operating the way we had envisioned it would, subject to the sharing formula. People adjust their enterprises to economic circumstances, to quota, so it becomes a more stable and more viable fishery.

Fisheries committee  Well, I think reality is different from the expectation.

Fisheries committee  It seems to be fine, insofar as the management plan reflects Minister Regan's understanding of the panel report and the recommendations that flowed from it. The misinterpretation is on how it was actually applied in 2009.

Fisheries committee  It goes to the issue of viability. One of the concerns we had as a panel in developing the recommendations was that we knew the resource was heading for a decline. It was already under way and would bottom out and then increase in a few years. So I understood the minister's reluctance to implement the recommendations as framed.

Fisheries committee  The only comment I have is that I agree with your interpretation. It's very clear. I think the wording was carefully chosen in the management plan. It captures essentially what the recommendations were from the panel. I don't know how it got to where it ended up in 2009. I'm not privy to that, so I have no idea.

Fisheries committee  Good morning. Welcome. I'm here as the chair of the panel that made the recommendations that the ministers have acted on. Having heard the discussion earlier on with the previous group, I'm going to zero in on one issue, which is what the report said about 50-50, and I'll be happy to entertain questions around that.