My name is Ruth Inniss. I work with the Maritime Fishermen's Union.
The Maritime Fishermen's Union, for those of you who don't know, is made up of membership in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with about 1,600 members. The lion's share of the members are in New Brunswick. In Nova Scotia there are a number of other organizations.
We're here, as Earle said, to talk about the crisis in the price of lobster in the industry. In New Brunswick, the lobster industry accounts for 55% of commercial landings revenues, $82.8 million. That was in 2006. The export value for the lobster industry in New Brunswick in 2006 was valued at $377 million. The asset value for the east coast of New Brunswick inshore is valued at approximately $180 million. There are 1,200 New Brunswick inshore captains, plus an average of two helpers per enterprise; these enterprises directly employ approximately 3,600 people and provide fish for 5,000 workers in plants.
That gives you a bit of a snapshot of what's going on in New Brunswick. Earle has covered a lot of the short-term and long-term points we've talked about.
The Maritime Fishermen's Union is one of the organizations that are part of the Atlantic Alliance for Fisheries Renewal. It's a fairly new alliance that's come out of this lobster price crisis, and so on. Most of you who have anything to do with fishermen's organizations know how difficult it is for them to come together on anything; this is an Atlantic-wide alliance. I feel it is really important that the Atlantic fishermen's organizations have come together.
As Earle said, there are two groups of objectives. They are broken into short-term and long-term objectives. Earle went over them for you, so I won't reiterate. One of our biggest concerns is that the short-term goals need to be met, and they need to be met quickly, by 2009 or 2010, but we can't lose sight of the fact that we have to do something with the fishery on the east coast. There have to be, as Earle pointed out, rationalization plans. There has to be work done on fisheries renewal on the east coast. It has to change the way it looks. There are too many fishermen fishing. Earle talked about the overcapacity, and so on.
I have some documents that I will leave with the standing committee. One of them is a pilot project that the MFU has put together in looking for money to deal with this. One thing we're doing is asking harvesters in return to be stronger on conservation measures, and so on. We're not just looking for an infusion from the federal and provincial governments; we realize that organizations and the harvesters have to move on conservation issues as well.
In terms of moving on conservation issues, through the winter and the spring a lot of work was done in the southern gulf on conservation. Groups came together and put forward their plans for conservation, and it was really difficult. It was difficult to get fishermen to agree on that, and at the end of the day the minister came out and said, “You can do it or you don't have to; it's up to you.” That was really difficult for organizations that wanted to move forward with conservation and take some responsibility.
I think I'll leave it there, because Earle has covered most of the details, but the one point that I want to make sure we're all aware of is that we can't lose sight of the long-term goals.