Fisheries committee  Sure.

Fisheries committee  You're stretching the limits of my memory. I mean, we've spoken about the transparency piece and how if DFO made licence holdings searchable, it would make a big difference with respect to transparency and being able to understand and monitor the issue. I will have to stop there.

Fisheries committee  Thank you for the question. There are a few reasons I would advocate that policy. The first is that as a researcher and someone who occasionally gets called to speak with folks like you, I would like to be able—independent from parliamentary proceedings and from DFO—to bring data and evidence that answers in specific ways, and beyond the single year that I've been able to look at, the research patterns that we can see in ownership and how licences and quotas are being used.

Fisheries committee  Yes, I can do that. In fact.... The short answer is yes, because I don't want to take up any more of your time.

Fisheries committee  I think the answer is that ownership information is complicated. There's the licence holder and the licence operator. In some fisheries, the licence is allocated to a vessel. We have the quota that may then be fished on the licence. These are all fisheries that are managed quite separately.

Fisheries committee  That's an interesting question. Fisheries are a public resource to be managed to the benefit of Canadians. In preparation for today, I dug up the way that a country like New Zealand looks at this. They have very valuable fisheries resources. They actually have an overseas investment office, in addition to a fisheries minister, looking at any foreign interest that wants to buy quota or become partial owners of fishing entities and processing entities.

Fisheries committee  Yes, I bet she will. I think what you're talking about is the sort of multiplier effect if we.... In short, I don't have specific numbers for you, but the way I would approach this question is to say that lots of coastal history and fisheries history in B.C. tell us that communities up and down the coast were once thriving and had lots of active vessels tied up on the dock and small or medium-sized processing plants that were running many months of the year.

Fisheries committee  Thanks. I appreciate your intro. It sounds like you're from Cape Breton.

Fisheries committee  I'm a born and raised Nova Scotian. I know that Ms. Sutcliffe from the first round has done some work to look at the sort of multiplier—

Fisheries committee  Thank you. I'm really happy for the invitation to be here. Thank you for that. The topic is timely and important. It relates to urgent questions that we've been hearing about already on who benefits from the culturally significant, nutritious and economically valuable fish in our exclusive economic zone.

Fisheries committee  You heard from a Canfisco representative yesterday that they own a large number of licences.

Fisheries committee  I'm trying to decide what to do about that in the publications, to be very honest. I think we've heard the large company names thrown around here.

Fisheries committee  Yes, shame. I hear they replay it on the Internet so you can listen to it.

Fisheries committee  Hey, I'm an academic. That doesn't get said about us very often.

Fisheries committee  I don't know, but it happens elsewhere in other countries. The study by the Swedish researchers that I referred to in my remarks found a small number of companies globally that control a large amount of catch. As Fraser was saying, there are discussions among researchers about vessels whose job it is to stay in international waters and sit on the line.