Thank you, Mr. Chair.
That's a very good question. I can tell you without hesitation that I've had to make many difficult decisions as a regional director general on the total allowable catch when I wasn't confident that the science advice was pointing in the right direction. Sometimes it was, but there are other examples when it definitely was not. History showed that it was not.
I did bring an example with me that I'd like to offer to the committee. It happened in the backyard of the riding of MP Kelloway. The other witness, Mr. Nash, might be aware of it. This happened when I was the regional director general in the Maritimes region, where I was required to set the total allowable catch for the snow crab fishery for the area east of Sydney and Glace Bay.
In 2016, there was a recommendation from science for a drastic reduction in the total allowable catch, cutting it from 620 tonnes in 2015 down to 286 tonnes in 2016, more than a 50% reduction from the previous year. By the time the recommendation for the TAC came to me, it had been reviewed by the industry advisory committee and the fish harvesters, and they offered their input on it.
Fish officers at that time were in a state of disbelief after having had a very strong fishery in 2015 with very good catch rates and widespread abundance. Some of them called me and expressed their grave concern, noting that they saw no evidence to support the drastic reduction being suggested and that they would not be able to make their vessel payments and survive on that kind of quota.
I met with the regional director of science and went over the science recommendation with him. Having had 30-plus years of experience in managing crab stocks in the Newfoundland and Labrador region and in the gulf region, I was skeptical about the validity of the advice, and I asked the regional director of science to have it reviewed. I was advised that the science had been done and peer reviewed, that there was nothing else to look at and that we shouldn't ask to review it because we would be questioning science, so I very reluctantly approved the TAC at 286 tonnes.
The fishery in 2016 was short lived with the very small quota being taken very quickly with very high catch rates. In the following year, 2017, the TAC recommendation was to set the quota at 825 tonnes, or 335% of the TAC for 2016. I raised the issue with the regional director of science. The only explanation was that the 2016 survey must have missed a crab. Noteworthy is the fact that the only time in the past decade that the TAC dropped below 620 tonnes was in 2016, at that 286-tonne level. In 2022, the TAC was 978.75 tonnes. That's quite the precision.
I use this as an example, not to single out this unfortunate situation that surely caused a lot of unnecessary grief, stress and economic loss to the fish harvesters in that area, but as an illustration of how models and processes can go wrong.