Mr. Speaker, I have, in fact, in my previous six-month tenure as a Minister of Renewable Resources, brought this very specific issue up with the Minister of Fisheries at the time, Brian Tobin, in a meeting I had with him in Quebec City. Now we have a new Minister. I shall be advancing the same position to him, as well.
The difficulty that the federal government has I think is that there is an overabundance of licences with a depleted fisheries stock in the Atlantic. So they are hesitant, possibly for political reasons, to issue new licences when they already have an overabundance of licences. We believe that because of the Nunavut agreement and because of reasons of sound, practical reasons as well as principles of conservation, it is only logical that the Baffin communities and the Baffin people should have first access to this fish stock. Thank you.