Thank you very much for the question.
We use a bit of a tiered approach. The first thing is we always assign a light icebreaker to Shippagan and Caraquet in New Brunswick, the Acadian peninsula, which is one of those areas that the fishermen want to get out to sooner rather than later. I completely understand that.
The light icebreaker will break ice, but it is restricted, of course, by its size and its draft and will only be able to do a portion of that. Then we cascade in other resources. We'll bring in the spot charter. We'll bring in a small tug that will be able to get into some of those other areas that the light icebreaker can't get into. It too is restricted by the fact that it can only break up to 40 centimetres of ice. Then we also bring in what we call the Amphibex machine—basically an excavator with claws on it that floats on ice—which is able to then break out additional ice that the other two assets can't get to. This opens up the shipping lanes that have already been opened up by the light icebreaker and the tugs so that the fishing vessels can get out.
The last resort is to bring in our air-cushioned vehicle, our hovercraft. The hovercraft will come in and then further break any ice. We have to balance the need of the hovercraft with regard to its priority in the Restigouche River area, which is a priority, because if we don't break ice there, we then have flooding into personal properties. Once we can get the hovercraft, it will come in.
It is very much a cascading approach. Because of the icebreaking, over the last couple of years we were basically opening up the fishing harbours about a week earlier, on average, than we normally did if we didn't have this cascading process of assets.