Fisheries committee  We've never thought of anything like that. It's the first I've ever heard of any program like that.

Fisheries committee  In the last three or four years my biggest worry has been making those payments. It's $9,000 a season, and then there's interest on top of that. So there's over $20,000 going to my banks. That's my biggest concern right now, getting them paid off. There would be no extra to go anywhere.

Fisheries committee  It's nice to get the lobster out there—more people get a taste for it. As for Subway, more people run through Subway in a day than through any high-end restaurant. I haven't had much time to think about it, but off the top of my head I wouldn't think this would be a terrible thing, because more people would be tasting it.

Fisheries committee  There's a buyer here in Alma I sell the majority of my lobsters and scallops to. But if somebody came along and offered me more money, I'd have no loyalties to this fellow.

Fisheries committee  I have to make a dollar, so if somebody offered more, I'd have to take it.

Fisheries committee  I have no idea.

Fisheries committee  Our fishery starts in the fall, the second Tuesday in November. I think the last time I got my buyer down was December 2. I fished for another three weeks and sold everything at $5 a pound. As for those guys driving the nice pick-ups, they probably got them two or three years ago, and now they're trying to pay for them.

Fisheries committee  Where I fish, there are no aquaculture sites. But I've talked to a lot of people who fish around them. They shove you out of areas you fish, which puts pressure on other areas, which puts pressure on other fishermen, just like a domino effect. It's the same thing off Saint John, where you get the LNG refinery.

Fisheries committee  I believe there's a boat loan board. I'm not sure. You can borrow money to buy a boat, but I believe it has to be a New Brunswick-built boat. As for money to get into the fishing industry, I was never pointed toward anything like that.

Fisheries committee  It certainly should lower the cost to get into it. DFO would have an idea of what's going on in the fishery and be able to see better into the future. If you go to a bank and there's a fellow sitting there in a suit, all he sees are numbers in front of him. If those numbers don't add up, then you don't get your money.

Fisheries committee  I believe somebody here might know the Charlotte County Business Development Bank. It's local. They have a flat interest rate of 10%. It's very difficult to borrow money from the local Bank of Montreal or the Bank of Nova Scotia. They want collateral for everything, and a licence isn't considered as having any value because it's basically government owned.

Fisheries committee  That's all I have a licence for, and for the port I'm in, those are the only two fisheries there are.

Fisheries committee  Since I got in the prices have dropped. The price of licences has dropped because the price of lobsters has dropped. When I got into it four years ago, it was when the government handed all the money to the Indians and said, “Here is all this money, but all you can spend it on is a licence”, so it drove the price of them up.

Fisheries committee  Altogether, initially it was $200,000, and that was basically just for the licence. I got an old wooden boat and 300 traps. I ran the wooden boat for a year, and then a boat a couple of ports down came up for sale. It was a fibreglass boat, a lot safer. My parents encouraged me quite hard to get into a safer boat.

Fisheries committee  I have one deckhand. I might take an extra guy late in the spring when we're in a hurry, and maybe for the first week in the fall, when the catches are highest. We need a fellow just to...[Inaudible--Editor]...and we fish a lot longer days because that's when the lobsters are there.