I can answer that for you.
I was totally flabbergasted when at 4:33 on a Friday afternoon—I work from home, and what saves the day for me is I get it late when DFO comes out with announcements—I read this, and it said “equal”. That's okay, 50-50. The quota went up over the 9,700, so it's 50-50. As I was telling Peter MacKay, I did the lotto dance. I thought, finally we got it. I was so excited. I even sent an e-mail to the snow crab fishermen saying we got it.
Then I kept reading it, and I said to Norma.... Norma said she didn't think that's what it meant. I read it again, because it wasn't very straightforward, not really. And I said I needed to talk to somebody. I couldn't wait till Monday morning.
So I started making phone calls to DFO. Nobody's there. Nobody's there. I had to look up Mike Eagles's home number and torture that poor man at home on a Friday afternoon and ask Mike to please explain it to me because I didn't understand.
He said there was new information, and this was the first I understood anything was even going to be changed. I asked what he meant, because this plan's been in place for four years. The new information was appendix B. It's supposed to be equal licences.
I was in total shock. I had to send out e-mails: I was wrong. It was a terrible evening.
Another representative from Halifax West called me and asked if I understood what that meant. I said I didn't know. The two of us read it together because this is the way it was worded: it was supposed to say 50-50 shares, but it said “equal”. So does equal mean 50-50? We said we didn't think this meant 50-50. It said equal licences, which is a totally different interpretation.
So this is how we found out. It was on a Friday afternoon, and they started fishing Monday. I'm quite upset with that, because if you're going to take a plan, and it's been in place for four years, and stability was wonderful.... We were sitting down with the traditional, permanent fleet, discussing science, discussing the best ways to look after the resources, discussing how many traps, the season. It was a very good working relationship because we were in it together. We were integrated.