Thanks, Fin.
Since the modern river fisheries are new, we had to look at a different model, a model outside of the box, because the fisheries are cyclical. You may only get a harvest once every three or four years, so we were forced to find more value and to find ways to work more closely with the fishermen, who were formerly dependent on big fishery companies to give them loans and to help them with gear and boats, but in return, they became beholden to the big fishery companies. We created small producers' co-operatives, so the fishermen worked together. We worked with them to provide financing to help them buy gear, to become safe and to organize themselves, so if they fished together, they landed together. They value-added their products together and sold their fish together and as a co-operative, we found that we got more stability in the jobs. We've got more stable employment. We increased the numbers of jobs. We found that the value to the fishermen increased up to 11 times what the fishermen were getting formerly on the riverbanks.
As we built these small fishermen's co-operatives in these small experimental demonstration fisheries in the rivers, we also built a service co-operative at a B.C.-wide level. The B.C.-wide fisheries co-operative helps us to provide services, like the big fisheries companies would do, but it didn't necessarily tie the fishermen to having to sell their fish to the co-operative. The service co-operative is simply there to help the small fishermen's co-operative make more value. We found that fishermen were working longer. They were doing more than just fishing. They were doing landing jobs. They were monitoring, and even got involved in science programs, so we really brought the fishery in much closer to the community again. We gave the fishermen much more pride and control over their fishery and that whole concept of owner-operator really came home. It came true. It was not only tying the quotas to the fishermen, but tying the fishermen and the quotas back to the communities, closer to where they look after the salmon.