I would disagree with one area: that we may never be back to full harvesting status. I’m not sure what that would look like, nor am I in the business to understand fully what that looks like. It could look like a combination of things and that’s why I’m asking about what support the Minister can offer in looking at this perspective from the outfitter point of view of keeping their lodges open.
I’m not going to ask him, and I know he won’t answer by saying how many tags are you prepared to offer today. We have to look at science; I agree with that point. We have to reinstate Aboriginal First Nation unrestricted hunting. I support that. I certainly can’t disagree with resident hunters being looked at in succession to those things. I just see that the missed opportunity here, as the herd grows, is that the outfitters might be ignored. It’s the balance of asking from their perspective of when is the government ready to get behind them.
I appreciate how the Minister is trying to line them up as Lego pieces and saying, well, we don’t get to the third or fourth one until we get through this first and second one, but we have to look at this as a bigger project and bigger support, because too much delay without a real incentive in the sense that something is going happen, we’ll in essence lose this industry and perhaps maybe forever, because nobody’s going to want to come back in the outfitting industry after the type of crash we’ve had.