THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, February 26, 2026
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met with videoconference this day at 8:34 a.m. [ET] to examine and report on the independence of commercial inshore fisheries in Atlantic Canada and Quebec, and the policies and legislative tools used by the Government of Canada to preserve it, such as the Owner-Operator Policy.
Senator Fabian Manning (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning. My name is Fabian Manning. I’m a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador, and I have the pleasure of chairing this meeting this morning.
Should any technical challenges arise, particularly in relation to interpretation, please signal this to the chair or the clerk, and we will work to resolve your issue.
Before we begin, I would like to take a few moments to allow the members of the committee to introduce themselves.
Senator Busson: Good morning. I’m Bev Busson from British Columbia.
Senator Surette: Allister Surette from Nova Scotia.
[Translation]
Senator Boudreau: I’m Victor Boudreau from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator Prosper: Paul Prosper, Nova Scotia, Mi’kma’ki territory.
[Translation]
Senator Poirier: I’m Rose-May Poirier from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator C. Deacon: Colin Deacon, Nova Scotia.
The Chair: On November 18, 2025, the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans was authorized to examine and report on the independence of the commercial inshore fisheries in Atlantic Canada and Quebec, and the policies and legislative tools used by the Government of Canada to preserve it, such as the Owner-Operator Policy.
Today, under this mandate, the committee will be hearing from Gordon MacDonald, President, Richmond County Inshore Fishermen’s Association, who is the managing director of Area 23 Snow Crab Fishermen’s Association. On behalf of the members of the committee, I thank you, Mr. MacDonald, for joining us here today. I understand you will be providing some opening remarks, and I’m sure, after your remarks, members of our committee will have some questions for you. Mr. MacDonald, the floor is yours.
Gordon MacDonald, President, Richmond County Inshore Fishermen’s Association: Honourable senators, it is a pleasure to appear before you today and contribute to your deliberations on ways to preserve the independence of the commercial inshore fisheries going forward.
I am a sixth-generation fisherman who began fishing in 1979. I have a master’s degree in science and have captained fishing vessels. I have led and represented fishermen since 1996. Interestingly, I first spoke on trust agreements in the fishery in forensic accounting with assistant deputy ministers from Ottawa during the Atlantic Fishery Policy Review in 1998.
The importance of independent inshore fisheries is easy to explain to anyone studying socio-economics: Productive fisheries are the lifeblood of rural coastal communities and Indigenous First Nations across Atlantic Canada and Quebec. Protection of the independence of the traditional inshore fleet with fair access to Indigenous Nations is paramount to these communities, the region and the country.
The challenge is that the success has created financial barriers. Complicated by their own success, productive fisheries have seen license values explode to the point where, sometimes, it seems the paper is worth more than the farm. This is, in part, due to business examinations like return on investment, or ROI, which assume that production levels won’t adversely be affected by stock biology, environmental or market changes. You only have to look at the corporate accumulation of dentists and veterinarians who hold licenses that cannot be bought or sold.
In fisheries, registered financial institutions seem to assess fishing license capital as carrying too much risk exposure — no wonder, given the volatility. The success of fishermen requires stock health subject to the biology of the resource; success of food sources; failures of predators; environmental stability, difficult considering ongoing climate change; fishery and ocean management changes, like new access, fishing area reductions, such as MPAs or wind energy displacements; and shore prices that can be affected by ENGOs, tariffs, gluts of live product and whale interactions.
Suffice it to say that a loan risk analysis puts big money fishing licences in the highly volatile category for big banks. Nova Scotia has a loan board, but our boat loan for $375,000 was at 7%. While it is helpful they exist, there are difficulties and generally high interest rates.
Buyers and processors with an interest in product supply and an attachment to the success of the fishery generally have greater access to capital and incentive to acquire product. Those are the good guys. Big money, including foreign investment and non‑fishery sources, is always looking for valuable opportunities for investment and ownership, and the fishery has become more recognized as a financially valuable investment in a well‑managed luxury-healthy-food production asset.
I have some thoughts on the matter to support this statement and these recommendations. A specific Canadian-focused funding source of capital with the necessary amounts of workable interest rates for all entrants into various fisheries or licences is important to avoid the pitfalls of the other sources of capital.
The continuation of the AFF program, or other similar incentives, to drive forward innovation and improvement is extremely valuable for increases in efficiency, production, quality and market value. It is essentially research and development seed money that promotes positive change, thus stabilizing the industry.
Global market development is something important. Collectively, the fishery is a unique national asset with a significant contribution to our GDP and an important contributor to global trade. The commercial fishery provides a lean, clean protein developed in the most unadulterated environment that exists on earth. As people globally become more affluent, there is a natural tendency toward health and quality of life through food. To this end, there is not enough of our precious seafood resources on earth.
Recognizing that there is not enough seafood globally, and with an increasingly unstable market with our largest trading partner south of the border, there is a real need to ensure global markets realize these products are available to them. From a supply-and-demand perspective, we need to drive demand, essentially, through awareness of availability, logistics to deliver, and support to bridge cultural and language barriers.
First Nation corporations are also important. The integration of First Nations into commercial fisheries has been mandated by the Supreme Court and is important for Canada as a whole. The entire well-established commercial fishery has a limited and fixed amount of fishing effort guided by the precautionary approach to sustainable management. The commercial communal access of First Nations is managed essentially in a corporate structure generally fished by the community with the economic benefits returned to those communities. This success has also sparked further investment in purchasing more licenses to increase their operations and profits. However, without reasonable limits on fishery shares, there is the distinct probability that these corporations will be the demise of the individual inshore fishing industry that the Policy for Preserving the Independence of the Inshore Fleet in Canada’s Atlantic Fisheries, or PIIFCAF, was meant to protect.
There are challenges with the owner-operator policy. Owner‑operator policies are critical to the success of the inshore fishery. However, in efforts to remove controlling agreements from parties uninterested in the fishing aspect, fishing families have been adversely impacted — “Throw out the baby with the bath water.” From five-year medical operator provisions to estate operations and succession planning, there are complications and harm.
I had to remove my wife from the shared control in our family trust, as it was tied to the fishing company. Thank goodness we have trust in the marriage, or I might have found out how much ownership the divorce court thought was appropriate. She has been my partner for 30 years with respect to kids, grandkids, home, family and our fishery. I’m not sure if I died tomorrow that a five-year dispossession period would be adequate.
Intergenerational transfers are another issue. Throughout intergenerational fishing families, there is a desire for the children to continue the family business. This license transfer works well if you have only one child. Unfortunately, the current system of the individual owner-operator requires the choice of winners and losers among families with siblings.
While there are mechanisms to attempt distribution among siblings within a fishing corporation through non-voting shares and distributions, there is still one sibling in control. Yesterday, I met with a senior partner at Doane Grant Thornton, who has repeatedly witnessed the act of appointing one child as the licence controller as the greatest destruction of fishing families he has seen. This does more to destabilize these fragile communities than the act was intended.
Further, from discussions before, Bill C-208 and Bill C-59 amendments have not solved intergenerational transfers. For example, there is still a multiplicity of capital gains exemptions currently available in arm’s-length transactions that are not available in family transfers.
My proposed solution is as follows: I would like to propose the committee investigate the expansion of the definition of owner-operator from a single living entity to an eligible fishing family entity that can hold inshore licences. Essentially, the eligible fishing family entity would include the definitions of family found in Bill C-59 and Bill C-208, adding the marital partner, of course, to the senior harvester. It would follow all residency and PIIFCAF requirements for the new entity. At least one member of the eligible fishing family entity would have to fish. All of the intent for PIIFCAF rules would be maintained with the new family entity, as opposed to the current individual entity.
I recognize trust agreements that violate PIIFCAF rules have been hard for the department to break. Our legal system works by letter of the law, and it is very difficult to envision the multitude of workarounds by incredibly smart people. Still, by enacting the PIIFCAF legislation and working to enforce it, there has been a real improvement in the reduction of trust agreements that were becoming out of hand before the legislation.
Still, there is work to be done, especially with product supply agreements that can be traced to access to capital arrangements otherwise too complicated or unavailable.
In conclusion, I would like to say that the independence of the inshore fishery is essential for the sustainability of coastal communities and the responsible stewardship of our marine resources. By addressing the financial barriers through dedicated funding, continued innovation programs, expanding global markets and modernizing ownership structures to support fishing families through something like the eligible fishing family entity model, we can preserve this vital industry for future generations while maintaining the owner-operator principles that have made it successful.
Thank you for your consideration.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. MacDonald. Certainly, you hit on some very complex issues in your opening remarks, and the purpose of us being here today is to try to see if we can sort through some of that.
Senator Busson: Thank you for being here. It is very interesting to hear your point of view, certainly from a financial and an owner-operator perspective, as it relates to the actual practicality of carrying on your business.
I am from the West Coast, and the fish regimes on both coasts are absolutely different. It is one of the things that strikes me and the rest of this committee as we move forward. I’m interested specifically in how these controlling agreements fit into the issue of owner-operator survivability and the work that you’re doing to try to make sure that this regime continues into the future. As you say, it is so important to communities, fishers and the economy as well.
We have heard from different witnesses that these controlling agreements seem to have an adverse effect on the whole business of owner-operated continuance within this industry. Could you enlighten me a little bit about controlling agreements?
Mr. MacDonald: Yes, Senator Busson, absolutely. Controlling agreements really are the root of corporate accumulation because one entity with financial resources will ultimately lend the money and take control of fishing enterprises, and operate it as a “shadow corporation.” Ultimately, that is the problem. It can be processing companies in search of product supply, because, again, product supply is the root of their business. If they can get control of the licenses and be the buyer and the seller, so to speak, that creates other advantages that go to enforcement, among other things. Again, there are other foreign interests that would love to have access to control of how our product is caught and where it gets sold in a backdoor mechanism to foreign ownership.
Big money can be nefarious as well, where people are looking to park large volumes of cash and have a half-decent return.
As it stands, under PIIFCAF, the concept is that the owner-operator not only has control but the benefit of the resource. What really happens is that control and the bulk of the benefits are siphoned off, and they become employees. When the benefits are siphoned off, that usually is what feeds into the rural coastal communities and the Indigenous communities, to some extent. That feeds all of that. So that is where the controlling agreements are harmful.
Minister Gail Shea gave a seven-year window for people to work out of them once the legislation came in. Since then, the department has been trying to investigate them to find ways to take back people who are in violation. However, fundamentally, it is extremely difficult because, working around the letter of the law, people are always able to adjust it just enough that it fits within the characteristics but doesn’t meet with the intent.
Under French law, it is about intent. English law is about the letter of the law, and with the letter of the law, it is really hard to match the intent sometimes.
Senator Busson: Just for clarification, these controlling agreements fly in the face of the intention. Someone becomes an operator, but they are no longer really the owner. Is that correct?
Mr. MacDonald: That’s correct, yes. The ownership is outside of that, so it looks like the harvester is the owner to the outside, but in reality, control of where the product goes and, ultimately, where the value comes off the top goes outside of that.
In an effort to protect that, it has become so constrictive that it actually hurts families who are trying to work together and transition down because you have to be so singular that even your wife doesn’t count. It’s funny. It wasn’t funny when I explained it to her.
Senator Busson: It’s not funny to me either, but it’s great that you can smile about something.
It is very concerning to hear that people do the workarounds and can still get under the wire with these things. Thank you very much.
Senator Surette: It’s nice to see you again. It has been a while. I think that might be a good thing with the issues we were facing back in the day with modern livelihood. I’ll hold that question for my second round. Thank you for your opening remarks. There was a lot there.
Some of your colleagues or counterparts mentioned the erosion of the owner-operator model over the past years and decades. There have been amendments to the Fisheries Act and to the regulations, but they mentioned that there are still loopholes in the regulations and ineffective enforcement regarding owner-operators. What is your take on that?
Mr. MacDonald: I have a couple of thoughts on that.
First of all, this works a little bit like driving on the highway. Roughly 10% of the people in a 100-kilometre zone follow the 100-kilometre limit, another 10% of the people drive 140, and 80% of the people depend on what the enforcement level is. Unchecked, 90% would be doing 140, and checked, 90% of the people would be doing the speed limit.
Controlling agreements are a bit like that, in the sense that, yes, there are still examples of people who are able to work around the system in such a way that the 10% who are always going to speed are going to find a way, but there has been a real change over time where a lot of these things have become unwound because people were afraid. Essentially, the threat of potential enforcement meant that a lot of people unwound these controlling agreements.
There are things like product supply agreements wherein they don’t have control over the licence, but they require you to sell all of your catch, essentially, to a particular person, who then controls what shore price you’re getting paid.
There are examples of workarounds that, again, because we’re trying to follow the letter of the law and not the intent of what controlling agreements were meant to prevent or the prevention of controlling agreements, it’s exceptionally difficult for the department. They have worked diligently, but they don’t have an example of taking a licence away from a controlling agreement, and there are still some of them in place.
Yesterday I talked to the accountant who is the senior partner at Grant Thornton, who has done a lot of these unwinding things, and he also feels that a lot of people have moved back.
The legislation has had a positive impact, but in terms of the mechanisms for enforcement, we need to continually monitor, apply and get better. Some of that is forensic accounting. I suggested back in 1998 to follow the money. It is practically impossible to hide the large volumes of money that move around to the point where you can’t identify what’s going on. It’s important.
Senator Surette: The Fisheries Act is being reviewed now. So there is the act, the regulations and the policies. Are there loopholes, or is the legislation strong enough, and it’s just enforcement that has to be done? Are you working with counterparts to change parts of the Fisheries Act or the regulations?
In addition, this is the first time I’ve heard of the eligible fishing family entity. My first reaction is that it seems like it would create another area of possible loopholes, like the five‑year medical leave, and people could use these types of arrangements to work around the owner-operator.
Mr. MacDonald: I understand that. You’re right. This is something that I’ve heard. People say, well, there are enough loopholes. Why are you trying to create more lax things? It will only further expand the abuse of what it is we’re trying to achieve.
I’m trying to suggest to you that the controlling agreements are about outside elements, not about intergenerational families. Take me as an example. I’m a father of six and the entity on the licence. If something happens, it’s about looking after the next generation.
As I said before, if you pick, for example, my son, because I only have one — although my daughter fished with me for 10 years, but that’s not the point — if one person fishes, the other five family members must trust that he’s going to look after them. This has been the destruction of families.
What we’re talking about here is creating an entity just like the entity that exists now in a singular owner-operator, but that is within a core family group, which is already in legislation within the intergenerational transfer side, save for the wife addition, or partner, I should say, because it’s 2026. I believe we can put enough guidelines around that so that the entity doesn’t lead to further abuse, but what it would lead to is the ability for one of the children, or my wife or somebody else within that family entity, to actually go on the boat and do that, should I not. It changes the dynamic from the possible necessity for the medical substitute operator or the necessity for the five-year estate planning and that kind of thing. It simplifies it, to some extent, and allows us to work as we have worked historically. Within farms or fishing communities, families have always done that.
Again, it’s about not choosing winners and losers. I can’t emphasize enough that, if you have two sons and one licence, and you have to pick one of them to succeed and not the other one, they not only become angry, they pick up everything and move out west somewhere or to Halifax. They never come home, and if they do, there is animosity that just cannot be overcome. Trying to find a way to fix that is critically important.
You need a hacker to figure out how to protect a computer system because the hacker is used to breaking into it, so he can also figure out how to protect it. To some extent, we need to get into controlling agreements that are working and get the people setting them up to work for us to figure out how to provide barriers to the loopholes, if you will. It’s a complicated process, but every time you think you’ve got something fixed, there is another workaround that you just didn’t see coming.
This entity thing is a completely different issue. I do not see it as creating more space for abuse. I see it as a relative solution toward family operation and community health.
The Chair: Mr. MacDonald, with regard to five-year estate planning — I’ve dealt with that on several occasions in Newfoundland and Labrador — there is certainly some grave concern about it.
Do you have any suggestions or recommendations that we could put forward in relation to dealing with that particular part of the equation?
Mr. MacDonald: Well, again, this is the proposed solution with the eligible family fishing entity because then you have the children involved, and the spouse of the person who passed away would still be able to maintain some control and ensure that the family is taken care of while bringing everything into place. By expanding it from a single human being — the person who died — to a collective, which is likely going to live on in a more fluid sense, that would provide some solution to your problem.
Senator Boudreau: Thank you, Mr. MacDonald, for being here today. I appreciate your testimony. I’m quite intrigued actually by this idea of a family entity. My first reaction to it is that it would be a very good thing because I would much rather see an owner-operator try to figure out his or her future within their own family than having to turn to a corporation or someone else who is more interested in putting in place controlling agreements.
However, I don’t have the experience in this industry that my colleague Senator Surette has, so I don’t quite understand. What are the negatives of this? When you talk about people saying that this would just create more loopholes, can you elaborate on that a little bit so I understand what some of the obstacles might be? To me, it sounds like a very good idea. I’d like to understand what the flip side of it is.
Mr. MacDonald: It’s natural that, every time you change something and add eligibility, there is the possibility that people can take advantage of that in some way that you don’t foresee. I myself do not foresee how that can be an issue. It’s just a natural reaction of people that, when they look at a system that exists and they see that the system isn’t effectively getting rid of existing controlling agreements that they think violate the system, they wonder why you would add more to it that ultimately could potentially add to that.
That’s the argument that comes forward. This is the whole reason why I sat with the senior partner at Grant Thorton about this intergenerational transfer to try to find solutions to figure out how to fortify the communities and the families, and this is the kind of thing we’ve come up with.
We need to sit down with legal experts and accountants who are doing these kinds of transfers to figure out the way to protect it, but there is a lot in Bill C-208 and Bill C-59, which are the amendments to Bill C-208, that can build upon the framework that needs to ensure that that kind of abuse doesn’t happen, but it does achieve what we’re looking for.
Senator Boudreau: Yes, because family trusts exist in the corporate world already. You’re simply saying, let’s take that same approach that exists in the business community now and just make it so that an owner-operator fisher can have access to those same types of privileges, tax shelters and everything else. Is that correct?
Mr. MacDonald: Yes, 100%. Beyond that, it exists in the corporate world outside of family enterprises, but in fishing and farming — and Indigenous communities, I would contend — the whole concept of the greater good within the family or the community is critically important to the success of the future because there are so few people in the various communities, such that, ultimately, destabilizing that by having winners and losers is a disaster. There are already not enough people there, and for those who are there, we need to make it more comfortable — not less.
Senator C. Deacon: Mr. MacDonald, I love the way you could laugh through your frustration. My colleagues wish I could acquire that skill. It’s certainly an asset.
We have had it suggested to us that Canada declare seafood as a national asset as well as critical minerals. Many of the solutions you’re talking about would naturally be part of that declaration, because we could then make it a protected national asset that is not being exploited in ways that we’ve heard about through controlling agreements and loan sharking, which seem to be happening in some cases where options aren’t readily available to folks in terms of financing their operation.
I want you to speak to that. Your comments are incredibly insightful. I also need a bit more detail on what the third-party opportunities are. I worked very hard on getting consensus in the Senate on Bill C-208 and was really glad that that came to pass. It was a tough battle. Chrystia Freeland was strongly against it at the time and did everything she could to stop it, but in the end we were able to prevail in getting that private member’s bill through. It sounds like there are issues that still remain, and I want to understand them a little bit more clearly than you have been able to provide insights on thus far — the ones that have reached my brain anyway.
Mr. MacDonald: It’s because I was trying to get down to five minutes, so I was cutting everything I possibly could and barely touching on everything. I was so stressed that I could only get it to 8 minutes and 30 seconds. At 1:30 in the morning, I said, that’s it; they’re just going to have to listen to me. I know that you folks follow very strict rules.
With regard to it being a national asset, 100%. Again, when I talk about the unadulterated environment that fish grow up in, its quality and health benefits and just joy of life, because again, we eat all of the time. You are probably going out for lunch, and you might have a snack, breakfast, supper — three times a day if not more — and fish is the best, period.
At the end of the day, we are fortunate in Canada to have a gigantic marine resource, and in Atlantic Canada we may not have a lot of things, but we do have access to the oceans, the benefit of the oceans and the sustainable production of fish through conservative management. So it is a national asset, because as an industry, collectively, I’m not sure that we’ve wholly recognized the value of our licenses. Part of this expansion is gone because outside business interests have done calculations on what our productivity and our returns are. Again, in snow crab, they now talk about $70 per pound of quota like it’s the buying price for the licenses. It’s astronomical.
I represent Crab Fishing Area 23, and I have looked after southeastern Nova Scotia, or S-ENS. I have a master’s degree in science. My uncle brought me back into the business specifically because he felt that you needed to have fishing and science blended together in order to work into the future with management. I can proudly say that, after 30 years of management in southeastern Nova Scotia, we have what would otherwise be deemed in the snow crab fishery an exceptionally stable stock.
Thirty years of points from a twelve-point survey and analysis has led to something that looks like a bullet hole in the middle of the green zone. That’s 30 years of points in the healthy zone through years of management with increases and decreases that have managed to keep the resource healthy.
For that healthy resource, with the population of people and even with the amount of fish that we have, it just isn’t enough to go around. It is an asset that is valuable. It’s an asset that we need to covet. If we don’t, outside interests will recognize that value and find ways to essentially possess it, own it and control it, and we’ll lose access to something that is naturally always been ours. So that’s important.
The third-party opportunity, which I talked about, is as follows: If you sell your business into an arm’s-length entity as opposed to a family entity, there is, through trust arrangements and other things, the ability to multiply capital gains exemptions that does exist. It’s interesting because, when it comes to the increased value of licenses, money is the root of all evil. It’s necessary, but it’s still the root of all evil. It’s a necessary evil.
Even the tax man says, “I need to get my share. I need to make sure they’re not getting away with too much.” It’s not a capital gains exemption or treated as capital gains versus dividends, which is what you achieve with Bill C-208. You move from what would have been treated as dividends to capital gains taxes.
After you guys are done with the fishing study, you should look at the tax scheme because that has a complex nature that is beyond the different rates for dividends or capital gains and the exemptions, et cetera. It’s mind-boggling. If you want to talk about something that’s ripe for abuse — oh, my goodness. You need professionals. You need people to go through it. A simplified tax system would benefit everyone because you wouldn’t have to plug all these holes to figure out how somebody is keeping a little bit more of the money that they should have.
Fundamentally, there is an ability in arms-length transactions to multiply the capital gains exemptions through the family that does not exist in your new Bill C-59 amendments. There are further discussions with Patrick about some grey areas that are generated by that within the transitional period of time, whether it’s an immediate transfer with a three-year exit strategy or a transitional period of 10 years, which is also within that legislation of Bill C-59.
It was absolutely great work, senator, but like everything, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Everything is a process. Fixing controlling agreements or getting this right takes hard steps, and you’ve done some of that. I really appreciate it, but can we get better? Absolutely. Thank you.
Senator C. Deacon: I have one final, quick comment. If you think things are frustrating, though, on the East Coast, watch our meeting from last night on the West Coast. It was absolutely devastating to listen to. Thank you, sir.
Mr. MacDonald: One hundred per cent. I’m well aware of the difficulties there. It has been an example for us that’s actually made us further drive for Preserving the Independence of the Inshore Fleet in Canada’s Atlantic Fisheries, or PIFCAF, legislation because, again, if you don’t learn from history, you’re doomed to repeat it. I feel bad about the situation that exists out there but blessed in the sense that they showed us the light to some extent. Thank you.
Senator Poirier: Thank you, Mr. MacDonald, for being here and for all the information that you’re providing with all your expertise. It’s fantastic.
I know you’ve touched on a lot of the issues that I had in my questions, but I’m just going to ask if you can expand on the current licensing regime that affects the ability for fishers and harvesters to enter. Specifically, if they’re not a family member, how are young people realistically able to enter the industry under this current regime, and how difficult is it?
Mr. MacDonald: It goes back to the idea that money is the root of all evil. Since we moved, again, from too many boats and not enough fish to limited entry, and then we applied our principles, and there has been an amalgamation within things; essentially, we’ve gotten to the balance where we have healthy, sustainable fisheries. This is what everyone works toward, but when you’ve got healthy, sustainable fisheries that are productive and people are making money, then licence values become high. It’s dependent upon the number of licenses and the production within the stock and so forth and what not. Values go up and down, but they reach very high levels.
If you’re talking about moving into LFA27, which is the eastern side of Cape Breton’s lobster fishing licence boat and package, it would be $1.5 million to invest in. So a young person today would have to find somebody willing to lend to them $1.5 million on the speculation that he’s going to be able to pay them back.
This is where I get to registered financial institutions. The government has allowed registered financial institutions to loan on licences, but the problem is that, with all the inherent risks I discussed earlier, it isn’t a good bet for them. It’s not safe or stable enough, or if it was, they would have to put the interest rate high enough that the individual would have a hard time paying back that kind of money.
This is what I said earlier about the paper being worth almost more than the farm. I don’t know that I could or would buy my own licenses today if I were an outsider, a newcomer, coming into the fishery completely unattached to it. The value is there, but the risks are scary, for example, climate change — since the world has been turning, the world has been burning to some extent. You have marine-protected areas cutting space out, you have new wind energy installations that are also removing space and you have interactions with other species, like the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which protects not only whales but seals, which are growing outside of the population. You’ve done a study on that. They are gigantic predators to fish. Anyway, there are a variety of instabilities. Then, you get to market, regulation instability and biological instability. Yes, things have been good, but that’s not predictive of the 15 years down the road required to pay off a $1.5-million licence for a new entrant coming in.
This is where I get to the suggestion about having some Canadian-backed fishing credit board, or whatever it is, that recognizes the value of this, recognizes the science and what’s going on and the management in order to allay their fears. When you try to explain that to a bank every time you go into a new manager and he sends it off to Toronto to figure out if they’ll lend the money, they’re not going to do it. Then, you get processors looking for product, and the bank says, “Yeah, come on in. I’ll give you the money.” But then the processors control everything about it and that guy ends up working for them like a slave for the rest of his life without ever really achieving what he’s looking for.
Those are where the difficulties lie. We need access to capital so that somebody who’s young and has decent work credentials can come in, and the bank, farm credit or fishing credit loan people can say, “Yeah, this is a good investment. This is what these are going for. This is how we see it being paid off,” and then set something that’s reasonable. That opportunity would then exist. In the absence of that, it’s subject to all of the other big-money investors that have nefarious ends toward the means that are not what we’re talking about. Thank you.
Senator Poirier: Thank you. I have two short questions, and I’ll put them together. We heard a lot in the testimony from the Pacific Coast a couple of days ago that a lot of people who own the boats do not own the licence. My first question is this: Are we seeing a lot of that also in Atlantic Canada on the East Coast? I know you shared different recommendations, and you talked a lot about keeping the licence within the family. Could you share with us how we can fix the system? What would you recommend that we do to fix the system for not only the family to be able to keep the licence but also for new harvesters or younger people coming into the industry to be able to have the flexibility? Thank you again for being here, Mr. MacDonald.
Mr. MacDonald: Again, it’s a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak to you folks.
The controlling agreements that we discussed earlier are examples where the licence isn’t necessarily held by the actual fisherman, and that’s our example on the East Coast. We’re working to get them removed. That’s the active thing, but as I’ve said before, in my speed example, it’s down to the 10% hardcore people, and the harder we work at it, the less that will expand. In general, we’re doing a good job in moving forward with PIFCAF and doing the investigation, so it isn’t as bad here.
Now, on the new entrants, whether they’re family members or not, family members have an advantage because if I’m a father passing it down to his son, I’m less interested in achieving the maximum value of the licence because I have a limited lifespan, apparently, so there are advantages. There are also training aspects that go along with this, because just following what we do as we work together makes it easier.
Now, that doesn’t mean that new entrants from outside can’t move in. Again, the difficulty falls back on exactly what I talked about: the access to capital. Access to capital is the only barrier to new entrants, and the inability to get the money to buy the licences is the bigger thing.
Now, licences in some places are very scarce. If you were looking to buy a licence in (LFA) 30, where I’m from, Fourchu, the best lobster in the world — Google it — there are 20 licences in (LFA) 30 and they’re scarce as hen’s teeth. Scarcity means that the value of the licences there is a lot higher, and it’s hard for any new entrants, even if you’re determined. I think the last licence sold for over $3 million. It was a lot. So that would be difficult. But area 27 that I spoke of earlier, the eastern side of Cape Breton, has 500 licences, and there is always a transition going there and the opportunity to move in.
In fact, two brothers who came from one father who had one licence, one son fished it, they were working it together. The family ended up having to dissolve that. The other son got the licence, and the first son, who did not, ended up getting mad and storming out. He ended up buying an area 27 licence at $1 million and then, four years or five years later, he was able to transition to an area 30 licence at $3 million. He sold the 27 licences and bought the other. So he found a way. Now, that family, the two sons, have two licences in our area, but that is unusual, and it requires a significant amount of work. It is possible, but fundamentally, the biggest barrier goes back to that loan business and having the availability of credit.
I suggest that it has to be something national because it’s a national asset that is managed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which is a national group, and so all the information that exists on the likelihood of success for the long term exists within that system and can stabilize this kind of thing for Canadians, which also ensures the protection of that asset. Thank you.
Senator Prosper: Thank you, Mr. MacDonald, for being here today. I have been sitting on this committee not for very long, but it has certainly been a learning experience for me. Senator Surette mentioned about the second round on livelihood fishery, and maybe I’ll just precursor that. I certainly have the benefit of learning, and I appreciate your evidence, certainly your experience, your education and the ideas that you have in terms of improving things, because there is a link between the fishery and the viability of communities, and it’s an important feature for any community.
I want you to provide your perspective because you spoke a bit about the commercial, communal element of those licences with respect to Indigenous communities, in my context, Mi’kmaq communities. There is that element of the communal commercial aspect of licences, and obviously, there is another element involving livelihood fishery.
I’m just curious because part of your evidence that you provided, at least along the communal aspect of it, included some mechanisms that seemed to be an affront to the owner-operator type of regime that exists through corporate management, at least within First Nations communities. I might have read that wrong but —
Mr. MacDonald: No.
Senator Prosper: If you could just enlighten me and help me out to understand those various aspects, I would appreciate it.
Mr. MacDonald: I will be careful as I walk through the land mine of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations. I say that because, again, as I’ve mentioned before, about 30 years worth of points in a healthy zone of the snow crab fishery, I have worked collectively with Indigenous First Nations since the expansion in 2020. They make up 52% of my fleet, and they have 40% of the total allowable catch in south Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and they have been steadfast partners in the management and the conservation. We’ve worked cooperatively for 25 years and beyond, to be honest with you, because there were some communities that participated before that.
So I have a lot of experience working collectively. Within that, the expansion that occurred in snow crab was something that also went through temporary access. Temporary access was provided to every non-Indigenous licence holder from Halifax to the northern tip of Cape Breton Island. These small share quotas were then amalgamated into corporate licences, groups of 15 or whatever.
In the process of expanding the crab fishery — when I first came along, I was young and wild, and they were using something called Leslie analysis to determine the population of the crab. Leslie analysis is something used as catch-per-unit effort data, and when the catch-per-unit effort data drops, it says the stock isn’t able to withstand the fishing pressure, which makes sense. Except that we fished competitively from 1979 until 1994, and we collapsed the fishery in the mid-1980s. We ended up going to Neil’s Harbour and fishing swordfish for two months because we couldn’t make bait and expenses in 1985‑86. Anyway, come along to the 1990s, the price went up to about $3 a pound, which was a lot. Originally, we were getting 26 cents a pound, so the value was high, fishing was going crazy again, the stock had rebounded, we asked for quotas, and it took until 1994 for DFO to implement quotas.
That was set over a 10-year average. If you remember, 10 years back from 1994 would have been through the middle period, which was the collapse, so it was set artificially low. With catch rates, the original quotas were 65,000; the Leslie analysis dropped it to 55,000. There was Indigenous integration, which put us at 52,000, and they were going to drop us again to 45,000, but part of the reason was because the catches were set so low, the fishing was so easy that no one was working hard at the end. So the catch rates dropped off because people just had to scrape up the last bit. They weren’t working to go get it because there were no issues, but from the scientific perspective, it skewed the results.
They had a trawl survey over the gulf, and I said to them, we need to do the trawl survey. They told me, “If you pay a quarter of a million dollars, we will do the trawl survey.” Well, being young and enthusiastic, I did the math and I went back to the guys and had a meeting at Albert Bridge, and I said, “If we pay $7,000 each, we can get the trawl survey and you guys can get your crab.” One guy who was mad got up and screamed, “You whipper snipper. Do you know what $7,000 of that is?” Then there was another old fella, and he was a bit of a criminal and everyone sort of respected him. He got up and said, “I think the young fella’s got a point.” When he did, the other guy sat down and said, “I’ll write my check right now. We’ll do this. We’ll do this.”
We went back to DFO and told them we were doing the trawl survey; we were paying the money. They found 100 times the biomass that was there originally assessed. The only thing we could do at that point was to say, “That’s the sample of one, and you need three to have statistical confidence,” so that’s why it took until 2020 to do the expansion.
During that time, there were access and allocation issues for new entrants — again, the crab that was going to be given to them because they were participatory in other major species — and the noise that went on. I’m sorry Senator Cuzner isn’t here today because he was here through most of that. The noise was immense, and until it got fixed into actual permanent shares, later on was when that noise settled down. Access and allocation issues have always created noise, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s Indigenous or non-Indigenous.
I’ve heard people talk about the communication between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities that would possibly lead to a resolution of this. That is only true once people have their fixtures or allocations and they are in the same boat, so to speak. I can use the example of snow crab in that particular case because through the expansion the Indigenous became one third of the fleet, we were one third of the fleet, and the new entrants were one third of the fleet. The Indigenous communities and the traditional fleet operated as one unit, so we became two thirds of the fleet, because there was us together with the Indigenous cooperative working together.
We have, again, cooperatively been working together for 25 years, and we’ve become friends. We have the same issues with marine protected areas and right whales and wind energy. It’s very common once you have your shares.
Senator Surette and I got to know each other after 2020, which was the advent of the moderate livelihood push, the concept that Marshall hadn’t been addressed.
Now, I have differing opinions than people — and this will be worked out in court — but it’s my understanding that the Indian Act precluded Indigenous People from fishing completely, and that was wholly wrong. When you learn some of the history, it’s brutal.
Anyway, Sparrow, the Supreme Court decision, came along in 1993 and said Indigenous People have the right to fish for food and ceremonial purposes, and they have done that through the history of time. That is an Aboriginal priority right, but it is not to be fished commercially.
Then, in 1999, the Marshall decision came along and said, no, they are not just allowed to fish for food and ceremonial purposes; they have the right to participate in the commercial fisheries as well, the largely regulated commercial fishery, by the way. It is also said in the pursuit of a moderate livelihood, but we are all allowed the pursuit of love. I’m not sure that we can ever actually obtain that, but the pursuit of it is always interesting.
In 2020, again, some really smart people with some wordsmithing have, in my mind, tried to create a separate right: not the right to participate, but the right to a moderate livelihood. Again, the pursuit of a moderate livelihood is really, in my mind, the drive toward commercial fishing. You are going to make money if you catch it; you are not going to make money if you don’t. Regardless, it’s about that.
In the process, what it’s managed to do is create new access, not different than the snow crab access that was created back in the development of the fishery that I spoke about earlier, and the noise remains the same. Because as long as the opportunity to create new access or provide new access exists, then it will always foster discontent among everybody. To be honest with you, when it comes to that, Indigenous communities don’t want to speak to us. It is a nation-to-nation issue. It is between them and the Government of Canada, and we can pounce in. We are beneath them, to be honest with you.
We are because fundamentally deciding who gets what or how it goes is not really our cause. Our cause has really been in the operation of the commercial fleet, in the sense that — I talked about it before. We’re on the cutting edge. If the resource declines, we are the ones who are taking the first cut.
I cut out the part — because I was trying to save time — about ownership. Tenured rights is something that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization talks about toward stewardship. If you have tenured rights to a resource, then you will protect it, because if it goes down, you’re going down; if it goes up, you’re going up, and you will protect it.
Tenured rights — again, the word “rights” is hard to talk about — is a sense of ownership. If you have a sense of ownership, like the snow crab, for example, and you know that protection of that stock and taking those cuts are about ensuring that the golden goose stays healthy and there are more and bigger needs in the future and longevity exists, then you will manage toward that. But people don’t agree with the way the system is because, sometimes, in order to change the system, you have to go outside of the rules to create enough noise in order to achieve change.
Again, in 2020, Indigenous communities feeling discontent with the way that things were being done, and a reinterpretation that the Marshall right to participate created both a commercial communal right as well as a moderate livelihood right — two different rights: one for the betterment of the pursuit of wealth and one for the individual in the pursuit of just getting along.
It has created new access and is a whole new category. Again, it is unfortunate that we have to have the courts lay down the clearly defined rules. Once those become defined and clearly laid out, then we can have those conversations and work together because we will have a common interest toward the future of the stock.
One of the problems we have in snow crab, to some extent, is we have vessels that come from far away and individual transfer of quota fisheries. Vessels will come down because they have big vessels of fishing crews and they want to work, and they will work for a fraction of the price and the quota shareholders get the bulk of it.
If you are catching snow crab for $1 a pound that is worth $5 a pound, if you caught a few pounds under the table for $2 a pound, the buyer is buying it for less than half price — let’s say $2.50 — he is getting 2.5 times what he would get for the other thing. It is a harmless crime. There is just more crab coming in.
The problem is that if you abuse the quotas that are set, you are messing up the million dollars, which is now what we spend collectively for an industry annually on the science survey whose information they use in order to reinvest that.
By the way, when I say we invested $1 million, if the Indigenous communities own 40%, they are paying $400,000 toward that. The fact that they paid that and we paid that and we work together with the information to develop that is an example of how the future can be once we get through access and allocation.
But until that part gets sorted out and who gets what and how it works, it is going to be animosity and trouble across the board, and that is not what we’re interested in.
In my little place in St. Peter’s Bay that I came to represent in 2020 for this very specific issue, actually, has been beaten to death in the fall by an unauthorized commercial fishery — again, predominantly by Indigenous People — that has been dissatisfied with the way the rules have been laid out or what it is or their understanding of how things are supposed to work. And that unauthorized fishery has generally attacked the resource health in that very specific location, and it is in an effort to create change.
Again, it creates a lot of difficulties in a lot of different ways. One of the resource managers of one of the communities had come out very publicly and said, “You will either fish commercial communal or you will fish moderate livelihood; you will not fish both.” Then, on a Sunday night at 10 o’clock, he was shot in his living room and it was one inch from taking his life. I spoke to the surgeon, who is a friend of mine. They just laid charges. It is five years ago now that happened, by the way.
This is not insignificant. Within the communities themselves, outside of that, with CMP and DFO and the fleets that have always relied on this — again, the people from St. Peter’s Bay are very passionate about that fishery; it is their lifeblood; they live on that. If there are any threats toward that, they don’t want CMP to come; they want to go and do it themselves. But those are acts of violence that then get labelled as racists for protecting something that is just about illegal access and illegal harvesting, which is illegal because, fundamentally, they don’t agree with the way the system is and they are trying to make changes.
So both sides have issues that lead to clashes. The reason why you haven’t seen St. Peter’s Bay in the news is because of the hard work of the people who have been working with me and the community to try and allow some of this to go on when it’s very heartfelt that it could literally be explosive, and a few times we were very close. It is getting better, but access and allocation need to be settled. Then, we can get to the cooperation that is natural among fishermen. It is not distinctive between Indigenous or non-Indigenous. Thank you.
Senator Prosper: Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and experience. We are looking forward to learning more from you. Thank you.
The Chair: I did allow Mr. MacDonald to go on, and I’m sure the committee was okay with that. Just listening to the wealth of experience, I thought of the fisherman who lived close to me in my small fishing community in Newfoundland back in 1992 when the cod moratorium dropped, and he had fish for 60-odd years. He leaned over the fence and said, “You should have listened to the fishermen.” Maybe that’s where we’re at today: We should listen to the people who are making a living on the ocean, not the people on the Rideau Canal.
Senator Surette: I thank Senator Prosper for his question. It was almost my question, and I will not ask you to repeat any of that.
The only other point on that would be if you could tie it a little closer to the Indigenous fishery, as you explained — the challenges there — to the owner-operator. Is it a challenge to the current definition for commercial fishers on owner-operator with the Indigenous fishery? Does it create any challenges to that definition? In other words, do you see there being two sets of rules?
Mr. MacDonald: It’s not so much that there are two sets of rules; it has more to do with the concept. The success that is being experienced within First Nations communities in fishing has allowed — because it is operated more corporately, in a sense, more community-wise — them to take the money and distribute it to the community. They can also take that money and reinvest back into the fishery.
The fishery is a “Peter and Paul” situation in that there is only so big a pie. That’s why I talk about the need for a definition of a sort of maximum limit. The whole reason why corporate ownership is part of the problem is because it can become complete more to the extent like we see on the West Coast.
If you have a series of licences that are able to continually take money off of that and reinvest back into the fishery to buy more licences to then reinvest and buy more licences, that corporation grows and is more successful, because, again, fishing has been successful. As I said before, Indigenous communities weren’t allowed to participate. We need to find what a fair level of participation is if they had never been excluded in the first place. That is really important.
Then, once they get established and operating, we can’t let them grow so big that they push the rest of us out at the same time. That is the point I’m getting to: That success in the corporation is about how we can do better. We need more licences. If we get more licences, then how do we do better? We need more licences.
But there needs to be a distribution that ensures the protection of the non-Indigenous side that is really a small entity. As I talked about, with the new entrants, it’s hard to get a million and a half dollars for an individual to buy into a thing. There have been expansions in one of the communities, and those very same licences have gone from 5 to 9 to 13 and it may be larger now. They are actively investing in more licenses, and they are more capable of doing it because they have a corporate structure.
So that same thing we are trying to fight against, in terms of corporations in general, we can’t fail to recognize that these Indigenous communities are also, to some extent, corporate and successful. God bless them, but they could also be the monster that eats us at some point, because, with that success in management structure and sustainability, they have the finances to continually expand that. That comes in the “Peter and Paul” situation of subtracting from the overall pie to the point where there’s no Paul, just Peter.
Senator Busson: It’s all incredibly interesting. I want to thank you again, because it’s been a great learning experience for me.
It occurs to me that you have to have a master’s degree in science, an MBA, a law degree and be a millionaire to be a fisherman. I applaud you for all that you are doing and all the things you need to do to sustain your business.
I’m also shocked that the intent of legislation specifically focused on the East Coast is, in essence, to maintain the community life and the lifestyle that an owner-operator regime is supposed to provide. At the same time, you described how families are destroyed over the same rules that are trying to preserve this lifestyle. It’s a no-brainer that something has to change in that effect. Like my colleagues, I am quite impressed with your solutions. Sometimes solutions that seem sound so simple are out there and nobody believes it could be that simple. I think it’s definitely resonating with me, and I believe it is resonating with my colleagues, in terms of those comments about being able to use a family entity as a solution.
You were talking about the power to borrow money. The Business Development Bank of Canada, or BDC, is an entity that is supposed to help small businesses and encourage the kinds of things we are hoping can happen to get entrants into fishing. Is that something that has been explored in the past, or is it something that is a solution for entrants into this field?
Mr. MacDonald: I wish it were. I have seen the commercials on TV, and I agree with you: It looks like that. However, I have never had that experience in my life.
We have gone to the Business Development Bank a couple of times, and it hasn’t particularly seemed open to it. Maybe it is and maybe it’s just — again, finance is complicated. It is not just about setting the bank up but making it available in a sense that people can recognize the opportunities. That is bigger than just pointing to the commercial saying they’re here to help, but, in reality, it doesn’t seem to be that way. I’m not sure what the Business Development Bank of Canada does, but I have never had any success there, and I don’t know anybody that has.
Again, it could be taking something as simple as that situation and then working a system to open that up to use that tool as the tool or something like that. But it’s breaking down the barriers in one way, shape or form. Maybe the institutions exist — like that, for example — but the barriers are still there. That’s what I’m trying to say. Thank you.
Senator C. Deacon: If BDC actually did what they say they do in their ads, I do not think they would need to advertise. That is just my own personal opinion.
Your trawl survey story — I want to ask a question that is relevant to previous studies we’ve done. I’m astonished how captured DFO remains with the use of trawl surveys versus using the old trawl survey data and one or two new trawl surveys, but combine it with local knowledge, acoustic- or sonar-based systems, EDNA and advanced modelling, I have to believe that we could have far better assessments of fish stocks.
Just something quick on that, because I have one other brief question.
Mr. MacDonald: The easiest way to answer that is to tell you that the industry pays for that trawl survey. If industry pays for it, it’s necessary. We’re not spending our money — I get government, and there are other ways — the groundfish survey that goes off. There are problems with different surveys. In this particular case, it is a highly effective tool that is used with math in order to generate a population analysis, and it really has led to a highly sustainable resource.
I will tell you that all kinds of crab have a high catchability rate, which means if the traps are there and the food is there, you are catching it. It’s really susceptible to management. Overharvesting literally destabilizes what we call the army on the bottom, the adult males, because the females are relatively small and subject to predation. They have lots of eggs, which are nutritious and delicious for the predators. If your army isn’t strong enough on the bottom to protect the habitat to allow the crewmen and the females to thrive, then you are destabilizing that population, and it’s all over the map as far as the biomass is concerned. This has been a really critical, useful tool in this particular instance. Not in all cases, but it’s very valuable here.
Senator C. Deacon: Thank you. The other thing we have battled with is involving processors in any way, shape or form. Certainly, we’ve heard from the West Coast and from the East Coast that processors can be a disruptive force in the value chain and certainly an integral force in terms of maintaining a fair market. What are your thoughts there? One of the challenges is provincial jurisdiction, and we’re federal. I wonder what your thoughts are about that.
Mr. MacDonald: The processing sector has a valuable role in the community and the added value to our products, but they also survive on the product coming in and their access to it, which, as fishermen, we are very finicky in the way we deal with things.
The easiest way for them to do that is product supply agreements and ways to ensure that they get that product. Those product supply agreements are really controlling agreements that can ultimately become excessive and grow to the point where they dominate the fishery, much like the corporate control that we talked about before.
The other issue that really needs to be looked at — and I know it’s provincial — is foreign ownership or back-door foreign ownership. I talked about that with our licences in general. It’s also becoming more prevalent. Big money is coming in from countries like China, where money isn’t an object. People get one and a half times what the value is. They think they made a great deal, but it continually erodes the protection of the asset that we talked about before.
Fundamentally, we have to keep processors and fishermen separate because when the buyer and the seller become one and the same — snow crab, for example, is quota based — it can become detrimental to actual land use and such. Then you’ve got controlling agreements as well.
Senator Surette: One of the challenges with owner-operators on the Atlantic coast is the number of owner-operators. You’re talking about thousands of small businesses, which is good, but the challenge is that, when you’re trying to get all the associations and these independent owner-operators together to talk in one voice, it’s difficult.
When you made your opening remarks — and, obviously, the export market is important because it drives the price to the fishers directly — you said something like, we have to drive demand. Who is the “we,” and how do you do that?
Mr. MacDonald: Well, that is sort of a collective. We tried with the Lobster Council of Canada as an organization, to start off with.
When I talk about driving demand, it’s because if you recognize the value and the limited nature of it, the only reason it ends up in gluts or situations where it’s not moving is because people don’t necessarily recognize the opportunity for that.
The “we” means that it needs to be facilitated by the government, to some extent, because they have many tools in foreign relations and other things. If we’re going to be small-based fishermen, as one of the senators mentioned before, it’s hard to have all of the tools in your toolbox to open that up.
I laid it out pretty well in the sense that it’s about identifying the product that’s available — again, working toward facilitating transportation mechanisms. Amazon has become a multi-trillion-dollar business because they can get peanut butter to my door at a cheaper price than I can go to buy it at Walmart, which is insane. The logistics are important.
Making the logistics available and bridging those cultural barriers — nobody wants to make new friends. We have a great relationship with the United States in the history of time, but the truth of the matter is, it’s a lot less friendly than it used to be. If we have to go make new friends, this is a great opportunity with a resource that is highly valuable that people are unaware of, because, historically, it’s been sold to somebody else. Now the opportunity exists, and that will strengthen everything about the fishery. When the U.S. does come back on board — and they will — we will have alternatives at that point.
When you’re in an auction and you’re bidding by yourself, you can conservatively keep the price going, but even the presence — like the reduction in tariffs to China — of another buyer, even if they’re not buying, it makes you more honest in putting the price to where you think it should be, lest it get too low and someone says, that is a bargain; I’m going to buy that for twice that price. All of these things factor into it, and that’s good.
The other thing I wanted to talk about is organizations. As fishermen, we’re very atomistic. For our whole lives, we’ve been keeping information to ourselves and working in a singular unit. Farmers don’t love each other any more than fishermen do, but when it comes to collective organization, they are amazing. When they get together in a room, they’re all pals. When they walk out, they’re fighting with each other. We fight in the room, out of the room and all over the place.
One of the reasons why I got here today was participation with the Unified Fisheries Conservation Alliance, or UFCA. That is where the invitation went, and they decided maybe I should talk to you. I belong to the federation and to the UFCA as a person from Richmond County.
We do our best. There is provincial legislation that provides mandatory duties and that gets people together and things like that. Certainly, when there are hot issues, attendance at meetings is through the roof. When things are cool, you can barely get anybody in the room. I can judge how well things are going by how many people show up.
It is a difficult thing, but fundamentally, it’s still the strength of the industry to have a multitude of people working toward a common goal, even individually.
The Chair: In all my time being around fishermen in Newfoundland, I can’t recall them battling among themselves, but it happens every now and again. It’s all part of a learning experience, and this morning was no different. We learned very much from you. You have been a great witness. Certainly, it’s a very complex situation we’re dealing with, but when people like yourself enlighten and educate us, hopefully, we can bring forward some recommendations to not only help people who are directing the industry but the country as a whole.
Once again, thank you for your time. We really appreciate it.
(The committee adjourned.)