Fisheries committee  Well, let me deal with that—

Fisheries committee  I'll try to deal with that very quickly as well. I think one of the points that Derek made was that this is very much an aging workforce. The average age in many of these plants is well into the fifties and sixties. They can't attract young people into the fishery because it's n

Fisheries committee  On the equity part, the point here is that we've seen the new entrants get virtually all of the increase and there is virtually no increase from the traditional fleet. I guess the point is whether you start removing these year-round jobs from the traditional fleet who had no incr

Fisheries committee  I've obviously allowed you to misunderstand what I was trying to say. The index is reflecting what happened last year and we can measure it going up and we can measure it going down, and we've done that. DFO has done that. They've done that fairly well. I don't take any issue wit

Fisheries committee  I'd like to give you five points in response. I'll do it as quickly as I can. First of all, this was an extraordinarily high increase, a bloom. The northern shrimp fishery existed at lower levels for decades before this bloom happened. We had this very high increase, and now it'

Fisheries committee  Most of the owners are Newfoundlanders and Labradorians—not all of them—but even for the vessels that are owned by the outside, in rural Quebec, in northern Quebec, for example, they're not specifically adjacent to that resource, but their vessel and their quotas are being run ou

Fisheries committee  Well, by the 800 people who are employed and who are scattered primarily throughout Labrador, northern Labrador. If you look at some of the plants in Labrador as well, including an inshore shrimp plant in Labrador, but also the groundfish plants, you see that they are directly su

Fisheries committee  It is, but the cash, the moneys generated from this fishery—the economic model is a profitable model—it goes back to the Labrador shrimp fishermen's union and pays for their infrastructure, for example.

Fisheries committee  Also, there's the Torngat co-op. It goes back to their union and pays for their infrastructure. The town of Harbour Grace survives based on this offshore fishery, and the town of Bay Roberts survives.

Fisheries committee  Sure.

Fisheries committee  Right.

Fisheries committee  It was area 6. So in 1996, the year before the new entrants came in, there was about a 10,000-tonne total allowable catch fished by the traditional fishermen. That started to increase in 1997. It rose by 74,000 tonnes up to 2008, and 93% of that increase went to the new entrants.

Fisheries committee  Thank you very much, Chair, and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity as well to join you today. It's been some years since I've been at the committee. I was here a few times many years ago. I've been in the industry myself since 1977, and initially in the Nova S