You may have talked.
There was an earlier witness who gave evidence before this committee; you would not be privy to it. In my opinion they gave a very simplistic generalization of the landscape of Atlantic Canada as it relates to the reasoning for a temporary foreign worker program to exist. They failed to recognize that for a lot of these seasonal industries, without access to temporary foreign workers and without that labour supply to top up their local supply, a lot of jobs in Atlantic Canada would be in jeopardy.
From your landscape and viewpoint in Prince Edward Island, can you comment on this? In my opinion he made a very generalized statement that really proceeding down that avenue was not required. One way was simply to continue to raise the wage, recognizing that in the seafood processing industry it is a known fact worldwide that seafood processing will move to an area of lower wages. That's why the European Union brings people in from the eastern bloc countries and Scandinavian countries do as well. Also, we do it here in Canada. In fact, in the U.S., the State of Maine is now competing very aggressively with Atlantic Canada on the processing because they have access to a much broader temporary foreign worker program than we have in Canada.
Could you comment on that?