You talk about the number of plants. In New Brunswick there are no new licensed plants, and there's a degree of self-rationalization that's taking place. There's only so much capacity that a province can handle. We're not facing the outlook of licensing new plants. The plants that are presently operating could be doing their own rationalization process as they move forward.
Today, we look at the viability of what has transpired and what's been taking place this year. Some plants just won't be able to make it, because they're going to lose their base of employees. In some cases, some of their employees are going to say, “I'm going to find something else”, or “I'm going to move elsewhere”, because we've taken the stability away from them. We've taken away their ground rules of being able to continue their life earnings in these plants.
When I go into the plants and have the opportunity to talk to the plant employees, all they're looking for is work. They would just like it to be structured in such a way that they can work their weeks. We understand that the biomass is going to change; we all get that. But if there had been a way that we could have structured the quotas to match the biomass going back a couple of years ago, we wouldn't be sitting here today; we would have viable industries.
I'm sorry, but I just can't help it. Working with the plants and talking to the employees about the impact and what's happening....
You mentioned the $120 million. We didn't know it was going to have to be used for crab; we didn't know this was the direction the situation was going in. We could probably have tailored some of the programs, or we could have had an earlier ask for maybe more. But for me to provide that answer today, I'd have to get some more background information on that to say how these funds were handled and where exactly they went. Frankly, we didn't know that we were going to have to earmark so much of that money that was coming in to the crab industry. Had we known, had we been better prepared for this, then we could have worked collaboratively on it and asked, “Okay, what are the answers here? What are the solutions?”
I know maybe it's not for me to ask a question, but I have to ask: did you folks have conversations with your federal minister before this allocation of the TAC was presented to New Brunswick? Were there any conversations or any consultation with you guys? I ask because I didn't hear about it. As the minister of the province, I didn't hear about it until 11:35 on the day of—11:35 on the day of—the announcement. I was broadsided.
So I'm hoping that maybe you folks were given a heads-up a little sooner and at least were able to have some discussions as to what the impact would be, because this is your province also.