Excellent. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all of our witnesses.
I represent a constituency on the east coast that has a lobster fishery on both the Atlantic coast and the Northumberland Strait, so this panel is of particular import to the communities that I represent.
I'm going to target my questions initially to Mr. LeBlanc. To the extent that there are supplemental answers from others at the end, I would invite you to join in, but I'm going to try to cram a lot into the next few minutes. To the extent, Leonard, that you could keep things short, I'd appreciate it.
First is on the income support issue, which is a theme that came up throughout this panel. The challenge as I understand it is that typically, fish harvesters in our region earn 12 months of income in about two months, give or take, depending on the area they may fish out of. In addition to the income they get from harvesting, many fishers earn enough to qualify for EI, which provides additional income support through to the following fishing season.
In this current year, for either market reasons or health reasons, we may find ourselves in a position where fishers are without the income they normally rely on and are hit by a double whammy, so to speak. They may have a reduced catch, a lower price or may choose not to go out for public health reasons. Because of that, they will have lower earnings, which in turn will deny them access to EI. If they do qualify for the CERB, they're still going to be without income for potentially six months of the year.
Can you express to me why it is going to be so important to cover this gap? It feels like the black hole issue we became familiar with a few years ago on steroids, in some regard. Have I summarized the issue appropriately, and is the answer as simple as putting in place the CERB or EI during this period for harvesters?