Thank you.
I'm Adrian Gloade, speaking on behalf of Millbrook First Nation out of Truro, Nova Scotia. I represent close to 1,700 band members from our first nation, on and off reserve. We have roughly 50 commercial licences, and I'm here to talk about how the lobster fishery will affect us at home in our community.
We're kind of in a crisis right now, and we're probably meeting twice a week just on hearsay about what the lobster price is going to be this year. It seems to be having a snowball effect on my fishers about whether they want to go lobstering this year or not in the spring season. We have licences for the eastern shore, the gulf, and down here in Digby area 35.
Just about every captain is telling me he can't even field a deckhand crew now because the rest of the crew want to go snow-crabbing. There are many challenges with chief and council to try to get these fellows to take these licences. With the hurry-up effect of the snow crab season starting earlier this year, I have a captain saying he can only afford to take one person because all the rest want to go snow-crabbing. That brings us to how many will stay home--employment issues and EI issues.
Depending on what the lobster price will be, I could have as many as 21 of my workers sitting at home. I'll have to try to find work for them in our other commercial fisheries. It's going to be a tough thing to do. We're trying to meet with the band members once a week now to find a solution to this problem. As Denny said earlier, maybe the price will come back, but these are the issues I'm dealing with right now.
I'm here to basically say that it has an effect on my snow crab, tuna, swordfish, and scallop licences. We had various crews picked for certain licences, and now with deckhands not wanting to go it's putting pressure on other people to move aside. It's not a very good place to be right now.
That's about it.