Fisheries committee  With respect to the commercial groundfish fishery, I would say that's not so much the case there. There are issues between first nations and commercial fishermen in other areas, but with respect to the pilot itself, the first nations concern was primarily being able to accommodat

Fisheries committee  There is a cost that comes with implementing this program, to be sure. As noted earlier, in some fisheries where there was very little monitoring, this is the new incremental cost. But over the course of the season, adjustments were made to try to minimize that cost. If I could

Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  They obviously would like to put it in their pocket. We would like to put it in their pocket too. Unfortunately, the alternative is that we close the fisheries early or something like that, and no one puts any money in their pocket. What they have is something that allows them t

Fisheries committee  The TAC is determined by our science department. They will work in some cases with commercial fishing groups and independent scientists to establish the size of the population, its productivity, and how many fish can be removed of that population. That is done across a range of s

Fisheries committee  We believe the approach we've adopted has led to improvements. As I noted in the presentation earlier, we believe that had we not made the changes to the fishery that we made, we would very likely have closed the fishery earlier, we would have forgone target species, and as a res

Fisheries committee  We do. Based on the minister's direction, we implemented an in-season monitoring committee. This is a committee comprised of commercial representatives working with the department. Our job and their job was to look at the progress in implementing the pilot, identify any challeng

Fisheries committee  I think I can wrap up with no problem. This is the most complicated part of it. So the minister then had a chance to look at the proposal and he approved the proposal with conditions. He said: First of all, I won't approve it on a permanent basis, but I will approve it on a pilo

Fisheries committee  I am. I appreciate the opportunity to appear at the standing committee.Today I'm going to make two presentations. I'm going to start with the integrated commercial groundfish proposal. You should have a small deck in front of you, and I'm going to go through that. I'd like to

Fisheries committee  Could I provide a bit more background on this?

Fisheries committee  First of all, we know from the experience we had in 2006 that we have to learn from it. I want to make that point. I don't want to lose sight of that, but I would like to respond to the last point you raised, when you have a moment.

Fisheries committee  The Fraser River has five species of Pacific salmon that spawn in it, and a number of non-salmon species. Those fish are present in the river, migrating downstream, after March 15. So even if you were to only remove gravel every other year, you would still have a problem of other

Fisheries committee  I do not believe that we have a surplus of fishery officers in B.C. We will transfer officers to the Fraser because that's considered the highest priority. That will mean that we will not have the kind of level in the areas where they're coming from that we would like to have. We

Fisheries committee  Thank you. I appreciate the committee allowing me the opportunity to speak.

Fisheries committee  It's because we do need to adjust to the circumstances, for safety reasons and for resource reasons. For example, the initial authorization permitted the operation to continue until the middle of March, but a decision was made to stop before that. Why? Because of conditions that