I'm not quite sure whether this document has been presented to this committee or not, but the alliance that Ruth spoke about earlier was among several harvester organizations throughout the Atlantic, and the document is Renewal of the Atlantic fisheries: an action plan for fleet rationalization.
We propose in the document that there be a fund that could be accessible to those fleets, and within the fleets to those individuals who chose to avail themselves of it, for fleet rationalization purposes. It would be totally voluntary, but there would be a specific checklist that would have to be met in order to qualify. It would include detailed business plans—implementation plans, objectives, and so on—as well as cost-sharing by industry; additional investment commitment from provincial governments or other partners; and a well-developed conservation strategy, setting out some fairly hard targets as to what the long-term goals were.
If a particular area said they weren't interested in it, that would be absolutely their prerogative. The idea would be to have a fund—nothing to be imposed on anyone—to say that if you can meet those criteria, including bringing some money to the table, then we think it's in the long-term interest of the Atlantic fishery to get the right-sizing of the fleet in relation to the resource, and we have a structure and a fund here designed to help achieve that.
That's how we would see going at it.