It cost $26 million, sat for 138 days, heard from 179 witnesses and sifted through three million pages of documents.
Yet there were no "hard-nosed findings" and few solutions to deal with the declining sockeye salmon fishery on the Fraser River.
That's the grim verdict in the wake of the Cohen Commission findings, according to the association that represents the Fraser River's commercial salmon fishermen.
Many stakeholders, including the Area E Gillnetters Association, had their collective fingers crossed when Bruce Cohen revealed his final report on Wednesday.
But the association's vice president, Bob McKamey, was left, like many others, wondering if the Stephen Harper-created inquiry was a complete waste of time and money.
"For the most part, we're very disappointed," said McKamey.
"We were looking for some very decisive recommendations to come out of there. However, the problems with the DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans) and the way the fisheries are being managed and the problems with the native fishery have not been dealt with. We are at a status quo, when we had hoped for some hard-nosed findings from all of this hard work."
Cohen did call for a freeze on new salmon farms - claimed by some to be partly responsible for the decline in sockeye - in the Discovery Islands off B.C.'s central coast.
Not surprisingly, McKamey said he supported anything that called for a suspension of salmon farming. However, he said, since 1992, the local fishery has been so mismanaged and abused that immediate and firm action is desperately needed to deal with disappearing sockeye.
"At the end of the day, this report was to get some semblance of sanity back in here; but it's not happened," he said.
The Cohen commission recommendations, which call for greater protection for sockeye salmon and their habitat, run headlong into federal government measures to water down environmental regulations and cut staff.
It's those government decisions which retired fisheries department scientist Otto Langer says virtually guarantees the report's findings will never come to life.
"We're dealing here with a government who will not act on this because it goes against their ideology," said Langer.
"We could have put 20 people in a room for five days at a cost of $100,000 and we would would have came up with the same conclusions (as Cohen).
"(The government has said) they disagree with Cohen. Why did they bother with the inquiry then?"
Langer was "modestly happy" that Cohen had done a "good job" with regard to the fish farms and the habitat.
But, not for the first time, Langer tore a strip off the manner in which Cohen himself ran the inquiry.
"He ran a very undemocratic process; a lot of people were muzzled and their testimony would have led to different findings," said Langer.
Former B.C. Supreme Court Justice Cohen took aim at the federal government Wednesday in his much-anticipated report on the decline of Fraser River sockeye. He said he was "troubled" by recent amendments to the environmental process and the Fisheries Act by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government.
"Many experts have emphasized the importance of protecting fish habitat, promoting biodiversity and adopting ecosystem-based management practices," said Cohen.
"However, the recent amendments to the Fisheries Act appear to be taking (the DFO) in a very different direction."
Cohen said he was disappointed the federal government didn't wait to introduce the changes in Bill C-38 until after the inquiry was complete.
He also noted "concern" over staff cuts in DFO's Pacific Region habitat management program. The Conservatives cut $79 million, or 5.8 per cent, from DFO's total budget this year.
In particular, Cohen noted amendments to the Fisheries Act shift emphasis from fish and habitat protection to the protection of fisheries.
That change lowers the standard of protection for Fraser River sockeye salmon, Cohen said.
Cohen called on the federal government to properly fund and implement DFO's own 2005 wild salmon and 1986 habitat policies.
Finding no "smoking gun" to explain the sockeye declines, Cohen also called for more research.
