There are a couple of different approaches. You might not like the way I would approach it, having grown up as a fisherman and having all the hard knocks. I'll share one quick story with you.
Running a boat in my early days, I had the misfortune of sleeping in. It was embarrassing because my relatives and other peers were already out catching and I was in plain sight. They could see me plain as day. Of course, the first thing that happens is you wake up and you panic. You get the anchor up as quick as you can and move out of the anchorage. Then you go and get in one of the lineups and take your turn. I never got that hour or two back, like they are offering now with the quotas and so on and so forth. This is what people don't understand, who are just asking these questions as we speak. That moment in time is gone. That memory for me...I smile and laugh about it now because, looking back, it was kind of funny but at the time I was more embarrassed, and I hid in the wheelhouse as I left the anchorage.
To answer the question, I know a little bit of thought needs to be put in it to be going forward. I personally feel, as a commercial fisherman and a native commercial fisherman, that I have nobody representing me properly. I've gone to many meetings, and I haven't been paid to go to the meetings. I've arrived and tried to say what I could say as quickly as I could. I've looked around the room and everybody who was in there was getting an honorarium. They were being paid to represent some place.
Getting back to what he's asking, I firmly believe, as a commercial fisherman and as a native commercial fisherman, that we need to be properly protected and represented going forward. I do have some good friends who I've talked to, and I'm not alone in this belief. If we want it to go ahead like he's asking and implement it, there are a couple of different avenues. It's not going to happen overnight, but it shouldn't happen in four years time. It needs to be done in the short term to turn it around, and there are ways of doing it. Right now it's very hard, as an owner-operator, to get financing from the lending institutions. They favour the corporations, the fish plants. I know that, first hand. We also have a 71-year-old vessel, and just trying to get insurance for it is not easy. Even in trying to keep in compliance with all the regulations that keep coming at us, we're still paying.