I missed your question on the labour shortage. Absolutely—we're all facing a labour shortage. Given the wind energy developments that are about to occur around the province, I fear that we're going to have further labour shortages that we're going to have to face. Our company introduced temporary foreign workers last year for the first time in our history. We were probably one of the last to adopt temporary foreign workers.
We still have operations in Bonavista, where we have 400 employees in our snow crab business, where we have zero temporary foreign workers. We have a waiting list for workers. There are regional examples where we still have a really good core workforce, but increasingly, with the aging workforce, we're moving toward temporary foreign workers. It's more so on our land-based processing than on our vessels. If you can offer year-round employment and good-paying jobs on a year-round basis, with no reliance on EI, it's more attractive. You can generally attract people into that lifestyle. It's not as much of an issue there.
In terms of the EI program, it's a bit of a loaded question. I'm not sure how to answer it. What I will say about the EI program is that the changes, obviously, that occurred here this past year will impact us, particularly given the shortened duration of coverage. It's not so much the hours of qualification, because I think virtually all our workers will qualify as seasonal workers. It's the fact that the changes that occurred because of the decline, I guess, in the unemployment rate will result in people running out of EI in mid-February, probably, or late February or early March. Our seasonal operations in snow crab don't start until April.
There's no way to bridge that gap, as it stands. That's going to be impactful. That's punitive, and it's going to be challenging. I think everyone is well aware of that. I know there's a lot of dialogue on that topic right now to try to find some solutions, hopefully.