The requirement for a sustainability plan was placed in the last letter of offer or the last contract we had with them. Prior to this, about three years prior.... Again, this issue of becoming sustainable, and ACOA's ability to carry on and do this forever, has been an issue for about eight or ten years.
Based on discussions we had with them back about five years ago, they hired a consultant to do, I guess, a report on the options or the alternatives to their organization's structure. After looking at all the options, they came back and said that they liked what they had. They liked the status quo.
When they came back with that, we told them then that this was just not practical. It was not a way of continuing to carry on business, but it seemed to be that they'd looked at some other options and inevitably came back to ACOA for pretty much the full measure of their funding requirements. The term “sustainability plan”, to me, would almost by definition imply that if somebody tells you to become sustainable, you're not expecting them to come back and say, “Give me some money, and I'll be sustainable.” That is the way we looked upon it.
We had certainly communicated that to the Marine Institute or the university. We had communicated it to the board members, or the chairman of the board, and to Mr. Bonnell on a number of occasions.