Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll start with the processing side. Last year at Icewater in Arnold's Cove, we worked 26 full weeks on two shifts or the equivalent of 52 weeks a year, which is the most employment provided for a plant in Newfoundland that focuses on producing wet fish or frozen-at-sea raw material. Fifty per cent of that was locally caught inshore cod, and 50% was frozen-at-sea imported from Norway.
This year, our goal is to not import any from Norway with the quota given to the offshore and to the indigenous aboriginal groups in Labrador, so that we would produce as much local cod as we can.
What's so key about frozen-at-sea...and from what I heard at the first hearing, I think people didn't quite understand it. OCI catches the fish, and they produce it frozen-at-sea. They bring it in, and then we can decide when we produce it. That allows us to work 26 or more weeks this year. We should have more employment in Arnold's Cove with the frozen-at-sea raw material.
In the inshore season, you have to buy it when it's being landed. If you don't buy it, it goes somewhere else. As was said, the majority of the inshore landing was caught in seven weeks. There is still some quota uncaught in the inshore. We're trying to get it caught right now. There were 150 tonnes. The fishery was reopened twice since the September 27 initial closure. We're still catching cod in 3K and 3L today. The 2J part for Labrador was closed. The allocation was taken up there, but it's still open in 3K and 3L.