I don't have a lot of time either, I guess, but I did pass around my business card with my number and email address, and I'd appreciate hearing from anybody who has any questions, because I have a lot to say. We've been years trying to get up here to speak on the mess in the fishery, the mess we're in.
I'm going to show you my own personal enterprise. I'm going to give you my own personal numbers of what's happened over the past eight years with our fishery.
Let's take the crab quota first, because for crab, for shrimp, for everything, our fishery is in a mess. The rationalization that DFO brought upon us has caused this problem.
Back around 12 years ago, I had one licence. I had 173,000 pounds of crab. That got cut down to 93,000 pounds in 2007. Because this was being cut, we had to buy into rationalization, which DFO came out with, with no help. They took away our tools—buddy-up and leasing—and we had to rationalize and go to the banks and purchase.
Today, I have two licences and I'm down to 90,000 pounds of crab. That's on two licences, whereas eight years ago I had 215,000 pounds of crab, so I'm down about one-third of the crab in the last eight years. Things were supposed to get better. We were going to rationalize. The industry was going to get better.
On the shrimp quota, I had 1.1 million pounds of shrimp in 2007. I'm now down to 400,000 pounds of shrimp. I took on a debt load of $1,980,000 to rationalize, which DFO told me was the fix for the fishery. We had to rationalize, so I took on the debt load. I'm paying $115,000 a year in principal payments, and I'm paying $99,000 a year in interest payments. That's $214,000 a year in loan payments alone.
Gentlemen, I had a business plan eight years ago that worked well, worked wonderfully, with the quotas that I had. Today, eight years later, I have a 20-year term on that loan. I'm down to one-third. My business plan is gone. It doesn't work anymore.
There are 1,200 other fishers in Newfoundland in combined enterprises, and they have the same debt loads. We're talking debt loads of $1 million, $2 million, and $3 million, and today you're cutting me again, probably by 25% on the shrimp and 10% on the crab? We can't pay the bills. There are no fish anymore to pay the bills.
We face environmental changes. The groundfish are coming back. They're rebounding. DFO has been denying this, but we know the difference. I have a brand new vessel myself, with the highest of technology. I had it built last year. There are 100 boats in 3K alone with the same technology. We're seeing the cod. We're seeing the redfish.
Years ago, they never had the sounders and technology that we have; they only had gut feelings. They didn't know what was on the bottom. We know what's on the damn bottom. It's no good for DFO to come out and tell us there are no groundfish. We have 200 miles of water and grounds that haven't been fished for 25 years that are thriving in groundfish: cod, turbot, and redfish. We're not allowed to catch it. They won't give us quota.
We also have the problem of the fisheries policy that cites that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has full and absolute discretionary power. This power has been greatly abused.
In the shrimp industry alone, we've had decisions where provinces like P.E.I. got quota off our waters. We got no quota at that time. P.E.I. got it all. They're not adjacent to our waters. Quebec, foreigners, and every NAFO division got shrimp to catch in our waters, but we're stuck in 3K and not allowed out. This policy lets the minister of the day use it as a political tool to get re-elected, and that is very unfair. It's very disruptive to our fishery, and it's not helping us one bit. I saw an ad in Seafoodnews.com, which is a worldwide magazine. They speak of this and they talk about how this is the ruination of the Canadian fishery and the Newfoundland fishery. It's time for that policy to change.
I have some solutions.
First of all, on the debt load that has been forced on fishers to take on in the industry, DFO has to realize that they can't ask the fishers in Newfoundland and Labrador to take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt load to rationalize the industry, and then pull the quotas away from us again, leaving the investing harvesters with a huge debt with no fish to catch to repay the loans. This has been done in the past and has got us in serious trouble.
One thing we could do is that if a quota of crab or shrimp has to be cut by 20% because of a falling biomass, then cut 20% of the harvesters. Don't cut the individual harvesters. Take 20% of the harvesters' licences out of the fleet.
Number two, let the harvesters purchase licences elsewhere in Canada. I was in Denmark. They fish around their country, I'm stuck in 3K. I'm not allowed to go buy a licence in 3L. I'm not allowed to go to P.E.I. to buy a licence, but P.E.I. can have quota in 3K. It's all one-sided. Why can't Rendell Genge behind me in 4R go buy a crab licence in 3L to help his enterprise thrive so that when it's bad in one area, he can thrive in the other to keep his enterprise on an even keel? This needs to be done. This needs to be looked at. It works in other countries. Why can't we use that model?
Again, take the policy of full discretionary power out of the system. This is very disruptive. This is causing us all of our headaches.
When we talk about our groundfish coming back, if a quota is caught on crab or shrimp or any other species, DFO can and should replace it with another species of the same value. As business owners buying into rationalization, we cannot be expected to take on these million-dollar debt loads as species fall, at the hands of DFO pushing us into it; then we have to foot the bill with nothing to replace it. They can't just cut me from 215,000 pounds of crab down to 90,000 and expect me to pay my bills without anything to come behind. We must have other species to catch. This species is there, just 200 miles aground; it has been 25 years and it hasn't been taken. It's time for us to start to reap the benefits from that species again, as we've done traditionally. I come from a family of at least four generations of fishing on these grounds, from Greenland halibut, cod, capelin, herring, mackerel, crab, shrimp, everything. I am a traditional harvester in Newfoundland.
In closing, I would like to say that the Government of Canada has put us in a very bad position. They have put the investing harvesters of the fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador at risk in owing hundreds of thousands of dollars to banks. The onus here is on DFO and the Government of Canada to step in and help us out, because our companies are going to start to go back to the banks with the keys in our hands. We have no choice. We cannot continue to take these cuts and debt loads.
Thank you.