Fisheries committee  Can I answer that, please? At our March 2009 an addendum was put on the agenda. Mr. MacDonald was there that morning. He put an addendum. He said he wanted to talk about the sharing formula. It was the last item on the agenda. He got up and said what he wanted to say. We didn't

Fisheries committee  On this past one, we were told the minister had made her decision and that was what it was going to be.

Fisheries committee  No. They knew we weren't okay, but we weren't at the advisory meeting to argue sharing formula. We were at the advisory meeting to set our start dates and to set our trap limits and to set our TAC, but they knew we were fighting this.

Fisheries committee  My idea is pretty simple. To make it better it's true co-management--not this farce that's going on now, but true co-management, where the industry really has a say in what's going to happen.

Fisheries committee  I'd like to answer that. One of the biggest problems we've got down here—and I referred to it before when I was talking—is that we have all these advisory meetings and we spend a lot of time in advisory meetings. I know I do, and everybody here does. But when push comes to shove,

Fisheries committee  There's no status quo. It went from our part of the fleet. We were getting 40% of the overall TAC, the total allowable catch. It would have changed to where we would share 50%, and in reality it went down to 38%. So we went from 50% to 38%.

Fisheries committee  Yes, except we lost. When we found out about this change our season had already started. We'd been fishing a month. We'd started fishing a month earlier under an interim quota. So when I got the fax stating we weren't getting our 50%, the boats were in the water. Just then the f

Fisheries committee  Hi. I'm Bernie MacDonald and I'm the president of the Port Morien, False Bay Fishermen's Association and I'm also a member of the Area 23 Snow Crab Advisory Board. First, I'd like to thank the committee for coming. It's a good opportunity for us to be able to talk. But I also w