—so let me start with the first one.
We did consult, but it was against a framework, as I said earlier, of what we intended to do. Later this commission will hear from mayors in the municipality of our facility, and those people were consulted through many of our normal activities. We went to county council. We explained what we're doing. We asked for advice from their roads engineers in terms of what the best route might be. We asked for assistance in terms of picking the right time that would be of least disruption—and this is really for road transport. You have to remember that we are all engineers and scientists, so we look at this as good science. We meet all the regulatory standards, but we don't want to disrupt our communities. We consult with them more about the movement of large loads through their community. That was the nature of our consultation. I'm sure the mayors themselves will establish that.
Once it became obvious, however, that there were concerns about the shipment itself and the seagoing part of it, then we started to recognize there was a broader communication challenge for us. Frankly, we believed that much of that communication challenge would be met by the pretty unusual, I should say, CNSC one-day hearing, because that wouldn't have been typical either. The nature of the package would have required the signature from a designated officer. I'm not sure that came across particularly in Dr. Binder's presentation, but had it not been for your public sentiment and other things, there would never have been a one-day hearing, which became a two-day hearing. And really, that was in response to this public concern and anxiety, and as I said earlier, I understand that.
You know, we sought to go out and engage people, and the way we did that is we used polling; we did our website. Latterly, to be honest, we used someone who has a better French accent than me and my chief nuclear officer, Norm Sawyer, to go and speak to French-speaking people so that he could explain in a better manner than I could exactly what we're all about. Did we go everywhere? No, we didn't.
In terms of our facility locally, one of the things you have to recognize is there are two groups at work here. Firstly, we don't have enough business in ourselves to create a facility that would manage this, because although you see these large units, there isn't a lot of activity to be dealt with. It's a small amount of work, so it wouldn't be reasonable for someone to set up a business to do that.
Secondly, you're actually not taking the benefit of all of the best practice and industry experience. There is a facility in Sweden that has actually done this for lots of different types of steam generators. It has developed an expertise. So to start again from the beginning would ignore all of that added value.
For those reasons we chose to do this.