No, I entirely agree with that.
The discussions on fisheries were difficult from the beginning. This is a sensitive sector for the EU. Even though they are the world's largest importer, they have a lot of sensitivities with specific member states that rely, to a considerable extent, on the fisheries sector to provide economic support within their own areas. And they have the same kind of situation that we have, where they have a lot of ports and fishing villages that are dependent on the industry. So they were lobbied hard not to open up the fisheries sector to Canada.
In terms of the agreements that the EU has done before, this is the first time they have opened up their entire fisheries market to a country that's a significant exporter, as Canada is. For the most part, they have excluded at least some of the fisheries sector from liberalization under previous agreements. And that really played into part of the broader package of the negotiations. This was one of our key offensive interests. So we pushed very hard on it and that balanced off against our accommodating some of the EU interests in some other areas.
But this is one area where we thought there were significant gains to be made and we exerted a lot of leverage behind this issue and I think it came out in the best way we could have hoped.