If you do the math, you will see that there are large sums involved. Recently, we repaired one third of our facilities. The total contract amounted to $5.2 million. That's a lot of money, but we should remember that the useful life of these wharves is 40 years. If you divide the total amount by 40, the amount per year is not very high.
As concerns strategy, we are currently working with the public servants. We have long-term plans. We are working very hard to achieve our goals, but we always run into the same problem: a lack of money. Our facilities and their high rate of use allow us to invest a bit of the fishermen's money in the repairs. We estimate that since the implementation of the program, the Administration portuaire de Shippagan has invested over $100,000, which comes directly from users. However, it only allows us to carry out minor repairs, since the cost of Maritime infrastructure can be unbelievably high.
We are administered by a board of directors. Since it was founded, the same directors have been sitting on our committees. My chairman, who is part of the National Harbour Authority Advisory Committee, was unable to be here today, and I find that a shame. He is currently in Quebec City for a national meeting.
We are extremely engaged and accomplish a great deal of work. As I said at the beginning, there is excellent cooperation between the public servants and ourselves. The problem does not lie with the public servants, because they receive our requests and work on them. The problem is that the money is simply not there.
I was speaking earlier with a Quebec representative and I was telling him that the situation in Quebec simply could not be compared to the situation in New Brunswick. Quebec has extraordinary facilities. I don't know how you manage to do it, but I take my hat off to you. I don't know if it's because there are fewer wharves than in New Brunswick, but as I said our facilities are coming to the end of their useful life. We are obliged to shut them down because the engineers with Public Works Canada have ordered us to do so, because otherwise accidents could occur.
As my colleague from Tracadie said, we are responsible for our facilities, given that, when the harbour authorities were created, we were given a fine package and told to look after it. That means that we are responsible, and that's why, if an engineer tells us to shut down a wharf because there are problems that could occur, we do so.
I would just like to repeat something because it is important. During conferences and recent meetings concerning small craft harbours, we were clearly told that if a problem occurred, we were responsible. We are obliged to take out insurance policies to protect our board of directors. Don't forget that today, especially in the case of my facilities, the users all have companies that are worth millions of dollars. Therefore, if a problem occurs while these people are using our facilities, they have the means to hire lawyers and sue us. Therefore we have to work on all aspects, whether...