I'd like to thank our guests for joining us. This afternoon we have two more witnesses, one from the Nova Scotia Fish Packers Association, Mr. Morrow, and the other from the Millbrook First Nation, Adrian Gloade.
Gentlemen, the way that we operate here is we give ten minutes for presentations and then we proceed into questioning. The members have specific times allotted to each for questions and we try to adhere as closely as we can to the timeframe allotted.
Mr. Morrow, you're going first, so I'll ask you to proceed at this time with your presentation. Thank you.
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Okay. I'll quickly run through the fall and winter.
I'll start out by saying that the economic financial crisis that unfolded throughout the fall of 2008 affected the demand for lobster. It was perceived in our markets as a high-end special-occasion food. The shore price fell to $2.00 to $2.25 U.S. in Maine during October. Grocery chains ran specials at unheard-of low prices in the U.S., and demand remained low, even at those store prices.
The world banking crisis was affecting seafood buyers and their distribution chain customers through tighter credit and concern about uninsured receivables.
The Atlantic Canadian lobster industry sees one of its two yearly gluts of landings during December as the Bay of Fundy fishery and the LFA 33 open. Buyers were expecting heavy landings if the weather was favourable to fishing.
This year we had almost an extra week of fishing because of the way that the last Monday of November fell on the calendar.
Pre-season market intelligence revealed a possible 50% reduction in sales to restaurants in the U.S. due to depressing economic news and the deepening recession. Economic conditions were also deteriorating in the EU and Asia.
Exports of live lobster from the Bay of Fundy to the Japanese market were affected by concerns over paralytic shellfish poisoning levels in the tomalley.
In recent years, the P.E.I. and New Brunswick-based lobster processing plants have purchased up to ten million pounds from the Southwest Nova fall-winter fishery. Shore price and the level of inventory held by the processors affect their appetites for buying during December. Discussions prior to the season opening indicated that three million pounds might be the processors' limit this year, and only then at much lower pricing.
The banks were cautioning lobster buyers about credit levels and how much risk should be assumed. With food service restaurants' demand decreasing, the live lobster buyers were hoping that low prices would stimulate holiday demand in the retail grocery sector. Everyone had concerns about a large inventory carry-over in January. Most processing plants would be closed and the economic recession would likely be worsening.
Landings were heavy, as expected, until mid-December. The season also started early, as I said, due to the position of the last Monday in November on the calendar. LFA 34 fishermen decided not to fish on Sunday in an attempt to slow the landings. The fishery opened at $3.25 Canadian per pound. Fishermen even stopped fishing for two days in early December to protest the low shore price.
By mid-December, many buyers were reporting export demand to be very slow and were nervous about the buildup of inventory. We talked about the possibility of a worst-case scenario, where a portion of a high inventory carry-over might end up in the landfill.
After December 15, mother nature intervened and we seemed to experience one storm after another. Landings fell off from early in December. As we had hoped, retail grocery holiday sales of live lobster were brisk as consumers responded to the low prices. The media focused on the plight of lobster fishermen by running almost daily stories about low prices and the hardship of fishermen. “Joe the Plumber” celebrated the Christmas-New Year's holiday by eating lobsters at home.
By early January, the P.E.I.-New Brunswick processors had purchased about six million pounds, double the expected amount, at a price around $3.90 delivered to the plant.
For many shore buyers, the first of January saw inventories cleaned out and the prospect of additional landings dismal, due to weather and a low shore price that was no incentive for fishermen to brave winter conditions.
There is always some demand for lobster exports during January, February, and March. Some shore buyers began to bid the price up for the meagre supply of newly caught lobsters and for some of the held product. Fishermen felt they had been misled and sold at too low a price in December.
Conclusion: if the weather had not affected landings from mid-December, if the processors had held to their three-million-pound prediction, if the retail grocery demand had been less robust, if the media hadn't provided so much free publicity for the product leading up to Christmas, if the fishermen had held a significant quantity, the landfill scenario and a further price crash during the winter might have been the topic of our discussion today. Hindsight is 20:20.
I can go on to the spring. Spring lobster production from Atlantic Canada is estimated at about 60 million pounds. The historic breakdown of that product usage is: processing, usually about 30 million pounds; live market, about 30 million pounds. Some of the questions we have at this point when we're thinking about prices for the spring catch include: will this year's landings be comparable to last year's, will the processors take their normal percentage, and at what price point can the processors take their share?
We have a few factors to consider. The U.S.A. summer and fall lobster production is approximately 30 million to 40 million pounds on top of the Canadian. I'll mention a few of the issues and you can question me about them. As we look ahead to spring, boat price is about $7 this week. It was $3.25 during the winter. Nobody could say right now what the boat price is going to be this spring, but it's a fair prospect that it will be lower than the $5 price that we had last spring. We expect excellent quality during the spring. We expect the landings to be at least as strong as last year. Demand is the $64 question.
How much will the processors take? The credit crunch and the buildup of inventories of some of their product is certainly going to affect how much they buy and the shore price of the product. The international economy seems to be getting worse as more and more people receive their layoff notices. Credit is a big issue for this industry, because we borrow money to buy lobsters to hold an inventory. Our customers are worldwide. In some cases, we're not able to get insurance for our receivables. So there's plenty of risk out there.
Fuel prices are a plus. They are certainly down from what they were last spring and summer. And right now we have a good exchange rate with the United States, which we did not have last spring. With regard to airlift, we're in a better position than we were in December—there will be some additional airlifts out of Halifax.
With respect to paralytic shellfish poisoning in the Japanese market, it's ironic that the U.S. FDA raised this issue last July. Lobsters can go out of Connecticut and New Jersey to Japan without being tested for PSP. Canada got included in the FDA warning. We have to do pre-testing of our product before we ship it to Japan, and then pay again when it gets to Japan for lot-by-lot testing. CFIA and DFO are working on the issue, but right now it certainly restricts our market in Japan.
These are some of the issues as we look ahead to spring, and I'll close with that.
I'm Adrian Gloade, speaking on behalf of Millbrook First Nation out of Truro, Nova Scotia. I represent close to 1,700 band members from our first nation, on and off reserve. We have roughly 50 commercial licences, and I'm here to talk about how the lobster fishery will affect us at home in our community.
We're kind of in a crisis right now, and we're probably meeting twice a week just on hearsay about what the lobster price is going to be this year. It seems to be having a snowball effect on my fishers about whether they want to go lobstering this year or not in the spring season. We have licences for the eastern shore, the gulf, and down here in Digby area 35.
Just about every captain is telling me he can't even field a deckhand crew now because the rest of the crew want to go snow-crabbing. There are many challenges with chief and council to try to get these fellows to take these licences. With the hurry-up effect of the snow crab season starting earlier this year, I have a captain saying he can only afford to take one person because all the rest want to go snow-crabbing. That brings us to how many will stay home--employment issues and EI issues.
Depending on what the lobster price will be, I could have as many as 21 of my workers sitting at home. I'll have to try to find work for them in our other commercial fisheries. It's going to be a tough thing to do. We're trying to meet with the band members once a week now to find a solution to this problem. As Denny said earlier, maybe the price will come back, but these are the issues I'm dealing with right now.
I'm here to basically say that it has an effect on my snow crab, tuna, swordfish, and scallop licences. We had various crews picked for certain licences, and now with deckhands not wanting to go it's putting pressure on other people to move aside. It's not a very good place to be right now.
That's about it.
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For live inventory, we do have a system that we run with the AVC Lobster Science Centre in Charlottetown, where we have 12 or 13 companies submitting on a weekly basis what their live inventory is in pounds, from their tank houses. The last figure I saw, I think last Friday, was an extrapolation from those 12 companies, with an estimate of about two million live pounds.
Where does that stand versus the last two years? Two years ago we almost ran out of lobster, and we hit $15 a pound. Trying to pull some lobsters out of the water at those high prices really cut us up in the market; a lot of restaurants took lobster off the menu because of that high price.
So we're somewhere between where we were two years ago and where we were last year. The last graph that I saw showed it had flattened out and was starting to hold its own; it wasn't going down further. So I think we have a moderate inventory of live lobster right now.
If you're asking the question about processed product, that's a very important question, because, as I said, out of the 60 million pounds we expect to be landing this spring and early summer, 30 million pounds have traditionally gone to the processing sector in P.E.I. and New Brunswick. So whether or not they buy that 30 million pounds is very important. Let's say they only buy half of that, because of their high inventories; and if we dump the rest onto the live market, it will depress the price.
So we don't have an inventory system. It's up to those companies, I guess. Maybe Mr. MacAulay might have a better understanding of where those guys stand—Ocean Choice, and some of those companies—with their inventory.
I've been told that popsicle packs of frozen boiled lobster are a problem. They have pretty heavy inventory of them.
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I wish I could fix the banking situation. People seem to be trying to, but....
I'm aware that every company is handling it differently. The big banks extend credit. Last November, when we were looking at what price we could open at, I was getting comments from some of our buyers or companies that they only had half the credit they had last year.
Also, in the past I could sometimes exceed that credit limit, and they would stay with me. But this year, one guy called a few days before the season opened and said he just had a call from his banker and the banker had told him, this is what you've got, and don't go over it.
Also, we met with a company out of Boston that gives credit outlooks, and they warned us. We know it's difficult to get insurance for our receivables, but they warned us to be very careful about how much receivable we ran up, as some restaurant chains were going into bankruptcy.
So I don't have a solution. As time goes on and the recession runs its course, hopefully we'll get back to a better credit situation
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The recession conditions are the big factors that are driving the market down. I think I said earlier that we received a review from John Sackton of Seafood.com at the lobster round table at the end of January or in February. His research had shown that restaurant buys were off by 50% in the U.S. A lot of lobster goes to that food service sector. We had to reorient to the grocery chains. The price points for grocery chains are lower. They need to run specials to get people to buy them.
I don't know what we can do to stimulate demand. The federal government gave us some money. The Minister of Fisheries found approximately $300,000 and the provinces kicked in some money. We've produced some generic marketing material, but it takes time. It was a short-term thing.
We need to think about the future. We had our lobster roundtable meeting in Halifax. Quebec was represented, as well as Newfoundland and the three maritime provinces. We're going to form a steering committee. We're going to look at long-term promotion of the product. Marine Stewardship Council certification is another big issue. I know that P.E.I. has already done a pre-assessment on that.
I think the industry is very fragmented. We have to get together, buyers and harvesters, if there's anything the federal government can do to facilitate that. But I don't think there is a fix in the short term.
It's going to be supply and demand right now. If the supply is really heavy this spring, I expect the price will go down.
Other than playing around with supply, I really don't have any answer to that. I don't think there's anything the government can do.
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Certainly it is in December. We land a lot of lobster in a very short period of time. It's not always handled properly on the boats. That could be improved. You have warm-weather fisheries taking place in the gulf, where the lobster is stressed, so handling is very important. Again, there's the holding capacity in the southern gulf, so that it's held properly.
Another issue, I'm told, is where the fishermen are fishing seven days a week and the plants are processing. They don't even get to close down on Sunday. They don't get to catch up. Sometimes they have to force product through into popsicle packs, something that they would rather not do. But it's coming in so fast, that's all they can do with it.
There is one other thing I would mention as a role for the government. It's not short term, but we pay, I think, an 8% tariff on live lobster going to the European Union, and that's not 8% on the wharf price. That's 8% where it's landed, with shipping and all that in there. We pay about a 20% tariff on our processed product, which is formidable when you're trying to competitively market a product in Europe against the shrimp and a lot of other products from around the world.
That's a big market, the European Union, so if you want to do something for lobster, the Canadian government could negotiate with the EU. Let's go after tariff reductions.
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I think somebody from DFO at a meeting yesterday pointed out that about 50% of the lobster that's landed in LFA 34 is landed in the first 15 days in the season, so there is a big concentration. You have to remember that once the water gets cold in January, lobsters don't trap very well. The fishermen have to have a price that will enable them to fish in deep water where they can find pockets of warmer water where the lobsters will crawl. Certainly a $3.25 price doesn't do that. It doesn't even cover for a lot of fishermen the costs they had in December.
Believe me, I'm not here today to say that this is going to be the price this spring. We really hope that with supply and demand we can work it so the fishermen can survive this period, and that we can survive it. So spreading it out, yes, we're constrained by the length of our seasons, and the length of the seasons are there for good reason. We try not to fish when the lobsters are moulting.
Sure, I think there are some things that can be done. I've always wondered myself if we couldn't reorient some of that December lobster, catch it later and spend more time promoting and working on summer sales when people are vacationing all over North America. If we had good promotional campaigns and worked more on that market, and also the European market, maybe we could reorient things a bit.
On marketing boards, we're free enterprise people. We believe that companies, if they can make a profit, will do the best job, but an industry promotional council, I think there's buy-in for that. Let's involve some harvesters and let's direct some money at generic marketing of the product. Sure, we can do that.
Georges Bank is the only place between Cape Cod and Labrador where we've had any significant recovery of a groundfish stock. We have the biggest biomass of haddock that we've had in the last 50 years on Georges Bank. We have 20% of the bank and the Americans have 80%. We don't think it should be put to additional risk through oil and gas. There's a bill in the U.S. Congress right now to protect the 80% of the American side. I've been talking with staff from Congressman Markey's office, and we expect the Americans will pass that legislation to protect their part of the bank. We manage the groundfish stocks together with the U.S., and it's been successful. We think we should be cooperating with them on protecting Georges Bank from oil and gas exploration.
As an industry, we've cooperated with the oil and gas industry. They can fill their boots on the Scotian Shelf. There are no other areas protected, and they've been drilling and doing seismic all up and down the Scotian Shelf. We haven't objected to that, even though it's sometimes interfered with the fishing we do.
Welcome to both of you. This is quite a learning curve for us. Sometimes you think you understand it, and then you learn a lot more.
I'll divide my questions between you, if I could. And I'll start with you, Denny
One of the things that we've heard is obviously about the issue of quality, quality control. The market is all about quality, plus price. One of the concerns--and we've got some variations, and you gave another variation today--is on what sometimes impacts the quality. Could you expand a little on the handling? Part of this was stirred up this morning with the Clearwater comments about the amount of damage that's done that way, I think 15 million pounds, or 15%, or whatever it was. But there's talk of it happening at all levels. You were talking about the handling on the boat, whereas we're thinking of handling traps after they left the boat. Can you expand on what you mean by that, please?
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First of all, on the boat, as the season starts, it's very high. As I said, 50% I think is landed in the first 15 days, so you'll see boatloads of 3,000 and 5,000 pounds coming in. Sometimes the boats have been out for too long and the lobsters are not held properly, not handled properly. That's one issue.
You have to remember it's a competitive fishery. Fishermen view it that if they don't catch the lobster, somebody else will, so they're going to do their best to catch as many lobsters in a short period of time as they can. That's the way the fishery operates.
Can we do more on quality with the fishermen? Some fishermen do a very good job; some don't.
Holding.... For lobsters, generally, that are held in crates, in cars just in the water, for any length of time, that's not a good system for holding them.
I'm often asked, “Why don't the buyers have a two-price system or a three-price system?” We would be willing to talk to the harvesters. We need to have more organization in the industry. For example, you could do an auction, an online auction. That's one proposal that's been put forward.
There are others you could entertain, but the way our competitive buying system works is if a fisherman comes in with a lower-grade lobster, usually there's always a buyer who will buy it, and he will pay the same price as the guy who gets the good-quality lobster. Sometimes you'll find a mixture. And if you say “I don't like that lobster, it's not good quality”, then you may lose that boat to somebody else.
There are incentives in our competitive buying system that we have right now and in our competitive fishery that don't always work for quality. We have started talks with our lobster industry round table as to what we might do, what alternative there is to the current setting of shore price--one shore price--what we could do. Those are talks at this point.
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Okay. I don't know if others had questions, but I have one more on that line.
To me, it comes back to this: it's the selling; it's the market protecting it. And we do hear all those stories of trucks stopped at the border for long lengths of time and Americans being very enthusiastic when it comes to slowing down the product and so on. But if the quality's not there, that's going to really nail you at the border and at other market areas.
What do you see going forward, though? You don't want to see more inventory on the processing side. Overall, you're just saying the inventories are high there, so the more live, the more quality goes out there. What, going forward, in terms of recommendations on the cooperative activity, do you see would make sense? If this is one of those difficult times in our history economically, what should we be collectively doing together that's going to make a difference in a year, or two or three or four years down the road?
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I have had discussions with processors where they talk about the need to slow down the product moving into their plants to give them time. There are some products that are, right now, in high demand. We have some inventory buildup of products that aren't.
That's the situation that has to be corrected. I know the processors on the island and in New Brunswick are having discussions with fishermen. At least I've been told that they have been. I think one of the difficulties is that when the season is under way, it's very difficult to talk to harvesters, because it's a competitive fishery. They're going out every day they can possibly fish. It's hard to even talk to them about, look, our inventory's coming in too fast, or we're getting overloaded and we're afraid the price is going to drop, maybe we should slow things down a little bit. We can't have those kinds of discussions.
We did have one. Ian Marshall from DFO was at the meeting in early December down here because we were afraid of just that. The landings were high, and they were coming in fast, and the price was low, and we worried about a crash. We did, very quickly, pull together some of the major buyers and some of the LFA 34 fishermen, and we talked about it. We said let's have a conference call in another week or week and a half, if we see things getting worse, because we may have to take some action. That's the kind of thing, I think, that we're into now and could very well be into this spring.
How do you get the industry together and say let's make a change, while we're in the season? It's very difficult to do.
I really appreciate the fact that you have come down here to listen to our views and our concerns. It's a shame--I mean today, April 1. I'd call it the second day of the opening of the season in LFA 34, because every fisherman can set 25 extra traps today, and they're all out there. It's been windy for a week. Anyway, Roger and I, as fishermen, have made it.
I am president of the Maritime Fishermen's Union, Local 9, which is southwest Nova Scotia. I've been working on somewhat of a proposal. I have to say that Senator Comeau called me last fall in regard to what was happening with the industry and how we could work about it and how we could possibly improve it. I have to admit, when December comes around and you get a call from Ottawa from Senator Comeau, my first instinct was “Hey, I've heard that the Prime Minister is looking for people to sit in the Senate”.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Hubert Saulnier: I was very disappointed. I thought this was a hell of a good career for me right now to start with.
First of all, we really want to thank the federal government and the provincial government for the announcements about the funding to help the lobster fishery seek new markets. That happened last fall. It was introduced to us by Mr. Kerr and Mr. Keddy a few weeks ago. The depressed lobster prices last fall showed the importance of dependable market information in a region that is critically dependent on the lobster fishery.
Instability in the lobster fishery has repercussions in all offset sectors of the western Nova Scotia economy. The negative impact was felt in construction, car sales, housing, and service sectors, which is just logical, I would say. This not only affects the regional economy but also results in lower government taxation revenues in the depressed regional economy. Furthermore, this can depress the economy of other lobster-dependent communities of the maritime provinces, as we know we have affected the lobster fishery in P.E.I. by what we did last fall.
This is to propose for your consideration an expansion of your recent initiative with the objective of strengthening the industry over the long term. This, I might add, is a concept that I've been working on with Senator Comeau since December. It's proposed by industry people and members of Parliament--Mr. Kerr and Mr. Keddy--who also agree this initiative has merit.
We will, I guess, get into questions of what the prices are we pay for licences, but we propose that a portion of the considerable yearly licence fee paid into the general government revenues by licence holders in LFA 34—and I do want to specify in brackets 33, as there is an another option to work with them too—be directed to an industry-developed agency in southwest Nova Scotia. The agency would hire paid research staff who would report to a board of directors made up of industry representatives. The board would set overall policy and research objectives. An agency directed by the industry would have the trust of the fishermen and the buyers as well and might therefore have access to valuable industry information not readily available to government.
The goal of the agency would be to gather local lobster harvest projections from the industry, to research price and market data, to research transport issues, etc. Staff would analyze the data and propose plans to react to market and economic forces sometimes beyond industry control, as was the case last year. It is vitally important to identify these new diverse market possibilities and enhance the possibilities of shipping live lobsters to market.
Some of the advantages would be--and I have another list in the first document I presented to Senator Comeau--an industry made more stable by dependable research and perceptive analysis, resulting in better revenues for the industry, a more robust local economy, and an increase in government tax revenues.
You may wish to have your economists evaluate the impact, but I am confident they would conclude that a more stable and profitable lobster industry would result in increased total tax revenues and make up for the forgone licence fees.
There should be no Treasury Board difficulties, because the funds would come directly from industry to the agency, rather than from general revenues redistributed to the industry. Government and industry would determine an appropriate amount to go directly to the agency or board. There would be no subsidy issues raised with NAFTA partners or taxpayers, because funding would come directly from the licence fees paid by the industry, rather than from general taxpayer revenues.
Areas 34 and 33 could serve as a test area. If successful, the initiative could be expanded to other areas.
We hope you will agree that this concept is, at the very least, worthy of consideration. I understand that this was hand-delivered to Greg Kerr, Gerald Keddy, and Minister Gail Shea by Senator Comeau.
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I'm Roger LeBlanc. I'm a fisherman. I'm with the Maritime Fishermen's Union. I'm on the lobster managing board, and I'm port representative for LFA 34. I represent roughly 80 out of 972 fishermen.
With respect to this agency we're talking about, it's already money that we're paying in. We pay roughly $890, and we're asking to get some back. We're all volunteers. I volunteer on the management board, and I'm a volunteer port representative. For example, this year in November at the eleventh hour we had to make a decision on whether were going to go on Sundays for the lobsters we had. We had to go. I represent 80 fishermen, and before you get to the round table and get all those, it's quite a job.
If this agency were there, they would have a task and they would put letters out ahead of time. We could hire students in the summertime. I don't think a fishery as valuable as ours should make decisions at the eleventh hour. That was one of the things. The other was our trap limit. That was another thing we had to bring back. It's like Denny Morrow said, we had to get to the table. They were talking about all the lobsters we were supposed to bring in during December. As a volunteer and fisherman at the same time, it's pretty hard to get going. Really, this would be very valuable to us.
At the same time, we're looking for new markets. We can even overlook the buyers, or see if we're in good favour or going the right way for new marketing. We need something in our fishery. The way it's looking for us as fishermen, it's not really a pretty picture right now in southwest Nova Scotia. We have a lot of problems coming down the road. There are a lot of decisions to be made and a lot of meetings. We're 18 in district 34, and it's all volunteers. There's no money coming in for nothing. Today we're the only boats at the wharf, tied up, out of all those boats. I believe in the fishermen I represent.
Another thing, off the subject, I'm really in support of owner-operators. Since I've been fishing, I've seen my grandfather and my father, then my father and me, and then me and my son in my boat right now. I'm a strong believer in owner-operators. That's another big problem we have in southwest Nova Scotia.
This agency is something that would be very valuable to us. We hope in the future we'll get it.
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No. From the time I was little I can remember—I'm talking mostly about in our wharf—we used to have a lot of fish draggers. Right now fewer than a handful are left. They're all owned by companies. We had all kinds of scallopers. It's the same thing: they're all owned by companies.
District 34 is one of the biggest independent fisheries left. We are seeing it going down the road. It's going down every day. We're losing it.
Where I'm coming from is when the Donald Marshall decision came down, the price of gear went up, and some guys who had fish draggers and quota sold them to the government to accommodate the natives in our fishery. What happened there, for a tax break they bought into our fishery. So with this trust agreement, when 51% of our fishery is owned by companies, we're done. When we get to the table--you have it on the west coast--we won't have a word to say. Now we're still independent fishermen and we still can go to the table and negotiate and have a fair deal, but if the licences keep going into these hands, which should be controlled and still is not, we're going down the drain fast.
For us in southwest Nova, it's really important. That is our backbone right now in the industry, and that's why I'm speaking for owner-operators. I'm a straight believer in owner-operators. At the beginning it was supposed to be that if you sold something to the native fishery, you were buying out of the fishery. You were gone. But that wasn't true, because they came into our fishery.
The way these trust agreements are going right now, we won't be independent too much longer. We can see it going down day by day.
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Oh, yes. I'm getting there.
Cut the licence fees in half. I said that was great, and that every licence holder would probably save some $900 to put in their pockets, and that's fine, but we have the same old problem. There is no representation. There is still nothing out there to try to promote the product.
I asked Mr. Comeau if Ottawa would be willing to cut our licence fees in half because we pay a tremendous amount compared to other areas. Why couldn't we still pay $1,890 to Ottawa, general revenues, and they in turn could submit 50% on average to an office in southwest Nova Scotia, where we'd have paid staff, a paid secretary, paid field workers, student hires in the summertime to do surveys of the industry's goal?
Roger suggested we had to make lots of decisions at the eleventh hour. We should have a way to get to the fishermen and see how they liked the fact that we closed the fishing on Sunday this season. We have no way of doing that. DFO can't do that either.
So that was the intent, if that answers the question.
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We've heard a fair bit of criticism about dockside monitoring here.
This is not your area, but of course you sell lobster, and you try to make a dollar, as much money as you can, out of the lobster. Holding facilities have been an issue. It was brought to my attention long before we made this trip. What seems to happen is that lobster, of course, is a delicacy, but it all comes at once, and the problem is that you don't get the full return on your investment.
Do you think there are enough holding facilities? Do we have the proper holding facilities, and if there are not enough, should there be more? And who should own them? How should they be operated? Should it be just the processors, or should it be a cooperative, or should the fishermen own the lobster? Do you know what I mean?
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We would be looking at this as a long-term project. Hopefully, my goal would be to have at least a five-year pilot project on this system. Again, rather than cutting our fees down, I'd rather use this.
This money would be used to rent an office in southwest Nova Scotia, pay rent, pay electricity, and hire staff. We need a small boardroom, because we have to come up with a board of directors, which would include fishermen and hopefully a few lobster buyers as well. They're part of the solution. We're looking at hiring a secretary, and somebody to keep the books in order and everything else, all the paperwork, the fax machines.
My vision would be to hire an individual staff person who would be working with the person we hire to run this agency--I don't know what to call it, I just call it an agency. That person would be sitting there. A lot of crew members do have concerns and they have nobody to turn to. Hopefully these crew members onboard our vessels would have somebody to turn to if they have a situation or a particular problem. They could go there and talk to this individual and discuss the issue.
This could escalate to become even more than that. We could hire students in the summertime to do surveys and interview the fishermen on things that could be done, too.
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If it's done by the buyers, the promotion, there's still a lack of trust among the fishermen themselves around what the buyers are getting for their product, the shipping cost. Are they really telling us the truth?
This agency would be working on behalf of every licence holder in district 34, and district 33 as well.
I think we'd have a lot more trust among the fishermen coming from this so-called office, body, agency, than from having a buyer promote the product. If MSC is coming down, who is supposed to pay for or cover that? We would like to be involved. Traceability going to Europe is coming down the road in January 2010. Who's going to pay for that? If it's a buyer, do we trust what he's telling us?
This agency would be the voice of the fishermen, sending out newsletters every month or every second month to the industry on what's really going on. I think it's the trust that needs to be there.
I have two other questions. We haven't heard yet today the effects that EI has on some of your fishermen, whereas in the Îles de la Madeleine and Prince Edward Island unemployment insurance was a huge issue for the fishermen. I'd like you to discuss the importance of EI to your fishermen as well.
The last question is on trust agreements. I've never heard an accurate figure of how many trust agreements there are in LFA 34. Do you have a ballpark figure, or if you don't know, could you put on the record how many trust agreements are out there? As you know, Minister Hearn previously put in a certain timeline, that after so many years the trust agreements have to end.
I'd like you, if possible, to give information on the EI and then trust agreements, if you don't mind.
:
I don't want to be quoted, but around the table, from what we've been hearing in setting this up, there are all kinds of trust agreements. There are, roughly speaking, about 300.
EI is very important to us. Our crew in some years will make $30,000 or $40,000, but this year if they get up to $12,000 to $15,000, they're going to be lucky. The families are suffering. It's too bad it has to come to money, but when the money is there, the partnerships aren't there. Family problems are a big thing for us. We really need the unemployment down here, because it's the only thing we have left. We don't have big industries, and fishing is their blood. If we didn't have EI, our fishery would be gone.
It's all right to say that you have a captain with a boat, but if you don't have the engine in the back—the crew—you have no fishery, because you can't go fishing alone.
:
I don't think there are too many boats. In the first month we took too many lobsters out of the water for the supplies we had, and I don't know how you could control that.
We have one of the biggest areas, district 34, and right now the fleet is divided. The extra effort, where the lobster is coming from.... We used to come in at the wharf every day. Right now, in the last few years, most of them have lights. They fish 24 hours a day, whereas before you couldn't. I don't even think that's allowed, but they still have them and they keep fishing 24 hours a day. They get two crews aboard the boat.
That's what happened in the scallop fishery. We had a good scallop fishery. But right now on the effort that we're putting in, I do think there are too many boats. I think it should be controlled. As an owner-operator, I go out in the morning, I'm back at night, but most of these guys are out for four or five days. And it's not the same quality that I bring in. It's coming back that I'm being punished for that extra effort and that mighty dollar.
:
Thank you for showing up. I know you'd rather be on the water, but you're here. And you're being very candid, which is not a surprise to me whatsoever.
Just going back on the proposal that you talked about, with Senator Comeau--the other senator--I think what's important is to go back to last fall. We were meeting with a lot of you from all around the industry about what the issues were, what the pressures were, what we could do. Those were all very friendly, quiet meetings, I might point out. But one thing that came clear is they were very concerned about the crew on the boats, about EI, all that goes with that. They were very concerned about credit, and the province was moving to try to take some pressure off there. They were very interested in the marketing initiative, and that's mainly where the thrust was coming from.
I just want to point out that when some raised the idea of reducing the fees, it was your own industry that pushed back and said that rather than the money going back into the pockets, the money should be invested into something. Just so everybody's clear, this is an early proposal. There are other things about how you can make it better. You're talking about policing and control. There are all kinds of ideas, I understand, on the table. Is there anything you want to add to that, other than what you've pointed out, as to why this would be an important step forward? It's not that you're paying so much in fees. You are; we understand that. There may be a reason. But if there were a reduction, you'd actually want to reinvest it back into the industry. This is a group you want to make that point to. Why is that a benefit to the overall fishery?
:
Number one, LFA 34 does not have a voice. I represent thirty-some fishermen, and everybody is in the same boat. We need something that's unanimous and has the voice of every fisherman in LFA 34 who would be involved in the decision-making process.
This is all new. It hasn't been escalated yet, but I would assume if we had the right person at the helm, promoting the industry and coming out with recommendations to sustain the industry, it would be beneficial.
We don't look at this body or agency making any recommendations of how we should fish and how many traps we should fish. That would be LFA 34's job. But we meet with LFA 34 and there are avenues that need to be taken, like looking at what is the pre-assessment of MFC, what is the quality, what are the markets out there. The LFA management board could tell this agency to do this work for us. And again, this agency would represent every licence holder, so the trust would be there.
Hopefully you will be interested in this so-called proposal, so we can come up with some more.... This is done by a bunch of uneducated fishermen and senators who draw the stuff as rough as they can—future senators.