In this entire story, the new entrants are clearly the ones who have the most to lose. They came into our industry with the largest debts in the history of the fishery, compared to the fishermen who are already exploiting the resource.
In our case, new entrants represent about 5% of our fleet. I don't know what the percentage is for the other groups, but nonetheless, a fairly large percentage of our group is in this situation.
Two things could help them quickly. First, it could be as simple as looking at the history of licence transfers. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has those data. The associations themselves have the information on licence transfers; it's mandatory. When a licence is transferred, we need to know.
Second, another simple option is to look at the history of the former owners of the licences to see what the status of their fishing enterprises was before the transfer.