There is no doubt the repercussions would be enormous. For example, some 20 years ago, there were about 60 mid-shore fishing boats in the Gaspé. Today, in the Gaspé and Magdalen Islands, there are only 18 mid-shore boats with a groundfish licence. It's the same thing in other provinces. By contrast, 20 years ago, there were 63 mid-shore boats in Newfoundland, and there are still 63 there today. Those fishers were compensated through shrimp licences. For Gaspé fishers, the fishers that I represent, the impacts will be significant because we have no shrimp licences. We depend completely on temporary shrimp allocations. About a month ago, we had to go out on the streets to try to win back what we had lost.
Sales figures for a mid-shore boat are about $100,000. Insurance on those boats costs between $12,000 and $15,000 a year. Then it's over, and we can't fish for anything else. In our region, plant workers will not even be eligible for employment insurance. You cannot do enough hours to be eligible for EI with the little shrimp we get. The impacts are huge.
In our region, people fish for crab and all kinds of other species. We get calls from everywhere, from all provinces, telling us that fishers are catching a lot of cod in their crab traps. As far as I know, a crab trap is not the right fishing gear for cod. If they are managing to catch that much cod in their crab traps, it's because there is cod. We're not saying there is a great deal of it, but there is some. All these negative repercussions make no sense. Some communities depend on the fishery, and communities will die because people can't go fishing. The small amounts of shrimp we get will not make it possible for us to make ends meet. When we want to charter our boats in the spring, we go to the bank, and people ask us what we'll be fishing for. We don't know. We can't charter our boats in the spring because it costs about $20,000, and we can't borrow money to charter it because we don't know what we'll be fishing for.
Those are the repercussions, Mr. Blais. The repercussions bring death by inches. The repercussions bring the disappearance of fleets like ours. These needs have been created over the years, as they have in other provinces.