I'm quite familiar with small craft harbours; it's a passion of mine. I served on municipal council a few years ago, and we were trying to lobby to have a small craft harbours establishment established in my town of Holyrood.
One of the biggest issues is that the federal government has a huge inventory of infrastructure that needs to be maintained. Newfoundland's climate is not necessarily conducive to breakwaters and wharf infrastructure, so one big thing that small craft harbours should look at is a divestiture program, potentially, of places where they're not utilized. I think a lot of the investment is made, and rightly so to some degree, on the landings—specifically landings—for the most part, for wild capture fisheries, not necessarily aquaculture, which is the industry we work in.
One challenge is the limited pot of funds. I think the last time I looked, it was somewhere around $25 million or $30 million for Newfoundland and Labrador. If you look at the landing ports for cod only in Newfoundland, I think you'd see about 300 around the province. There's a huge inventory of property. They need to look at the total market value of the species. The fishery's changed so much in the last number of years. Some of these wharves are decades old.
I think we really need to take a look at a strategic investment, not just for today but for tomorrow. What do we see upcoming? We know, for example, that salmon aquaculture and shellfish aquaculture are increasing, but because of the limited funding available to maintain such a huge inventory, some of which may not be used at all, the government really needs to look strategically at future investments.