I'll try.
Every time you turn on the radio or TV, especially back in Newfoundland, back home—I don't know about up here, because it's new to me—it's always doom and gloom. You see fellows going around in all kinds of different small rigs. You never see the people who put a lot of money into it, and God love the ones who don't put the money in it—it's up to themselves. I'm not trying to make bad friends here.
I started off with a small boat and worked my way up. We built a new 80-footer. We have a 55-footer and we have two 40-footers. No company owns us. I can guarantee that, boys. Everything we've got is owned, and we'd own a lot more if the companies would get out of the way or you people would let us.
For me, sitting back here now, I want to buy more licences. They can say what they like about it. A good many of us want to buy licences, but we're too limited, three and combining, and I have to sit back now and let Mr. Quinlan and the rest of the plants buy up stuff and give to those people. If our combining was changed, I'd go four, five, or six in each one of the boats so Mr. Quinlan can't get so many. Then you have way better jobs and more men employed, and then doom and gloom wouldn't be there.
If a plant owns it, he can tell you to go and fish. You get one licence, you go do this, you go do that, and you do that. There is a nice bit of that. A lot of it is our fault for sitting around the table and letting that happen. That's where I think the doom and gloom would come into it. If a plant owned me, I'd go this way.... I wouldn't be able to afford the licence that we have because he wouldn't go along with it. He'd send me off fishing. When we're independent, we can buy our licences.
We don't want money from anybody. We can go to the bank and get our own money and do our own thing. Over the years, we've done very well. Let us do that, and we can turn stuff around a nice bit, in my opinion. We have 13 of us on our boats now making very good livings. Leave us alone and we'll make 26 very good livings. That's about as good as I can tell you.