Yes, Mr. Speaker, I am aware of the ongoing push by the Baffin communities, particularly, to acquire licences for offshore fishing, particularly adjacent to Baffin Island, and the difficulty they are encountering. This has been going on for about four years and we are still having some difficulty acquiring allocations and licences for the Baffin people to fish in areas adjacent to Baffin Island. We have been trying to add our voice to the Baffin communities and the Nunavut leaders, in asking the federal government to do what they can to ensure that the Baffin people benefit from the resources that are found adjacent to their communities. We will continue to do what we can to ensure that some of the licences that are presently in existence are reallocated to the Baffin so that it's not existing fishermen and businesses from the Maritimes and Newfoundland who are, after having fished themselves out of existence, moving North to possibly do the same. We will be doing what we can to ensure that the Baffin people get to fish and that this is probably, on a conservation basis, the best way to ensure that someone will take responsibility for ensuring that the fisheries are handled in a way that's going to be sustainable. Thank you.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We do have intentions to actively push the federal Minister to do what he can to recognize the legitimacy of the views as put forward by the Baffin. It is and should be beneficial primarily to the Baffin communities, before anyone else in Canada. It is in fisheries adjacent to their communities, and the Baffin is not adjacent to the Maritimes, it's not adjacent to Newfoundland and it is fish stock that is in waters within the Nunavut settlement region. Every economic opportunity is supposed to be, under the claims agreement, given preferential treatment for the Inuit in the first instance. So we will be asking the federal government in every way we can to ensure that this is done in the interests of the Baffin communities. We will be asking the Members of Parliament as well as the federal Minister to act on it as soon as possible. Thank you.