When Roméo LeBlanc was minister, he got an agreement with the companies that they would not own more than 12% of any of the salmon licences. It was just a policy.
As fleet consolidation took place, the companies divested themselves and made sure that they didn't own any more than 12%.
Now I think Canadian Fish, the Canadian Fishing Company, owns around 40% of the licences outright. They achieved that through a number of ways of doing things, including bankruptcies and consolidation with other companies. Canadian Fish was actually a big player in the industry in 1980. Canadian Fish closed, and BC Packers bought the northern assets of Canadian Fish, and then Canadian Fish bought out BC Packers. There's been this whole roll of consolidations. Canadian Fish bought Ocean Fisheries.
Now there's just one large company, and that is Canadian Fishing Company. All those licences that those other companies owned were part of the deal. That's really, I suppose, how Canadian Fish got most of its licences.
There was an interesting study done by Andrea Haas and Danielle Edwards. They tried to find out how many licences are actually owned by Canadian Fish and how many licences are operated through controlling agreements. She's written a paper that's published in Marine Policy. She goes quite extensively through the hoops she tried to jump through to find out who owns what boat and what licence. She believes she has only scratched the surface of that ownership. Her paper is published in Marine Policy. It's short, and I really urge you to read that. She goes through how difficult it is to find out who owns what licences because so many are owned under numbered companies.
We know that Canadian Fish owns 40%. What we're not sure of is how many more they own through shared ownership with less than 100% ownership or how many they have controlling agreements with.