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Panning Federal - Provincial Fisheries Renewal Plan
By Myles Higgins
Monday, April 16, 2007
Last thursday the federal and Newfoundland and Labrador governments announced their plan for a Federal-Provincial Fishing Industry Renewal Initiative. They launched the initiative at a press conference identifying measures both governments claim will "fundamentally change the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery."
The new plan appears to include many necessary financial and safety changes in support of fishers. In fact it seems to address many aspects of the industry from a commercial perspective, but that's exactly the problem. While commercial issues needed to be addressed, what is sadly lacking are any measures to ensure the future of the fish being caught and by extension the future of the fishing industry.
Nowhere in the plan is there any mention of an approach to phasing out destructive fishing techniques. Nowhere is there any recognition of foreign overfishing and nowhere is there any mention of the illegal activities or ways of enforcing regulations off the province's shores.
The initiative spreads around a great deal of money to enhance the industry from a commercial perspective but from an environmental sustainability angle it completely misses the boat (no pun intended).
The new initiative includes:
Fleet rationalization allowing the combining of fishing enterprises;
Flexibility on vessel size;
Elimination of volume restrictions that existed in the former vessel replacement policy;
Conversion of temporary inshore shrimp permits to regular licenses;
Changes to capital gains measures meaning potential savings of up to $60 million in taxes in 5 yrs;
Measures to eliminate trust agreements;
Improving fishers' ability to access financing by facilitating the use of licenses as collateral;
An enhanced fisheries loan guarantee program;
$3 million to enhance market research and promotion;
$6 million for fishing industry research and developmental including work associated with the development of new species, new products, new markets and new techniques to harvest, handle, process and market the resources;
$1.5 million for a voluntary fish auction;
$2.5 million for Fishing Industry Workforce Adjustment; and
$750,000 for Occupational Health and Safety initiatives.The only initiative that could even possibly be seen as an attempt to do something to protect the fish at all is the following item:
$19.5 million will be invested in fisheries science over the next three years.
While some will say that $19.5 million for science is wonderful, when you consider that $9 million of that (and likely much more with the usual cost of government overruns) will go to keep the science vessel, the CCGS Templeman in service for a few more years. The aging and decrepit vessel is in service now so that's nothing new, though anyone who's actually seen it might be amazed it can still float, thus the millions in funding to keep it in service.
The federal and provincial governments have termed their new initiative an "Ocean to Plate" approach to fisheries management when what it might better be termed is a "Boat to Market" approach. I don't know where the "Ocean" part comes in. Maybe someone should go offshore and ask a cod fish what it thinks of this plan, if they can find one alive.
Myles Higgins is freelance columnist, who lives with his wife and a terminally lazy Terrier named "Molson" in the beautiful town of Portugal Cove - St. Philips, His website can be found at: Web Talk - Newfoundland and Labrador. Myles can be reached at: letters@canadafreepress.com
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Views are those of authors and not necessarily those of Canada Free Press. Content is Copyright 2009 the individual authors.
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