What we are doing here in the province of New Brunswick is putting the best practices and standards in place.
You mentioned consulting with the public. We've done that since day one. I mentioned in my brief 10-minute spiel that we had an open house in my backyard in Sussex last weekend. We had over 400 people who came in and talked to three different industries. We had the Department of Environment there. We had the Department of Natural Resources there, with all the people who were experts in different fields, just to explain to them how the process works from A to Z.
We were quite happy with the outcome. At the very first part, we had the mayors and council people in, along with LSDs. In the next hour, we had concerned citizens groups come in for an hour to express their views. What we heard loud and clear was that while we accomplished what we did that last Saturday, they want a public forum so that they and the general public can come and make their views known to us. That's exactly what we'll do within the next month or so. We'll have industry there, we'll have government there, and people will be coming in, probably with a facilitator to make sure everything runs well.
We've been very up front with the people of New Brunswick. We've been very up front with the industry here. Just last week, the environmental impact assessment that we phased in was explained to industry. We met for over three hours. The environment people explained the EIA process. That's how we're being up front with industry, so that if this does go through, they know 100% where the Province of New Brunswick stands.
We feel that we have ample time to do that with industry and ample time to do that with the concerned citizens groups and the citizens. That's basically why we did not put a moratorium on here.