I don't know their mandate or what they have to live with, but I think that's a great idea. It's an excellent idea. We should do anything to reduce the costs.
When we first had Tavel down to do a presentation, it was something like $500 or $600 an hour for their work. It was ridiculous. And they needed two or three of them at a time. I worked it out over a five-year term to be $500,000. That's ridiculous. You go back to the fishermen and tell them to be prepared to go into their pockets and pay for that.
So if any of you have ideas like that, they'd actually be great. They're trusted, I believe, by not just the fishermen....
We had buyers and processors around the table, and we were actually talking with each other in expressing concern about the industry as a whole. I thought that was a huge step. I don't know how it's done in other provinces, but this was huge. We had all the provincial ministers there as well. We even had the Minister of Fisheries at one of our meetings. It was great to see everybody concerned about this.
This is a lobster crisis, in our mind. We've come to a point that what is happening now cannot be maintained. We have to make a movement. This is what I got out of that meeting on Monday. As industry, we're prepared to move forward. But after the meeting, he told us, by the way, you no longer have funding.
So it would be very interesting if they could add that on. I know we would definitely take advantage of that.
Ashton didn't mention it here, but all the LFAs are trying to get together and work as one in getting certified. My understanding is that in order to get federal money, or even provincial money, if that large group works together it seems to be easier to do that. As an industry, I don't know if you realize how hard that is, to get all the LFAs to sit down in a room and agree that we're going to spend a whack of money on something we're not even sure we believe in.