I have just a couple of points. I'll bounce back for a second to the buyout issue. It really benefits potentially everyone, because although it directly benefits those who avail themselves of the opportunity to sell out, as some leave, those who remain benefit, because the pie has been cut up into fewer pieces. It's really a benefit for everybody.
What I was primarily driving at was that the feature of the EI act that allows for pilot projects in a fairly broad way to address issues in the economy and objectives of the government struck me as a useful vehicle for acting quickly on things. Something along the lines that it describes is certainly one way.
Another--and I don't know this, because we haven't vetted this with anybody, and it's a bit off the top of my head--might be to say that people have an option to simply turn in their lobster permits for the year and extend their EI benefit instead, as a choice. To me it doesn't make sense for us to be putting more lobster into a market that's already saying they don't want the stuff they've already got. That's the dilemma I see: something that helps somebody who has that problem hang in there may create a problem for us next year.
That's what I'm trying to get my head around. With the best of good faith in trying to address a serious problem, how do we avoid extending the duration of that problem because we're just feeding that glut in the market, which is what's really killing our prices at the moment?
We need anything that helps us get around that. I just thought the EI program, in particular the pilot project feature, might be a useful and accessible vehicle for doing so.