I appreciate that, sir. It's really helpful to actually walk through things and explain them as opposed to....
In any event, one of the tables goes into the landings by area of the offshore fleet. There are areas ranging from area 0 in the far north, which is way down the Davis Strait. So 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are the management areas of northern shrimp.
The Newfoundland and Labrador inshore fleet, which Mr. Watkins, Mr. Russell, and Mr. Genge, who came with me, participate in, has access in only two of those areas. Some of them have access to only one, and some have access to two. They all have access to area 6. Some have access to area 7.
Area 6 is the main shrimp area for these people and for Mr. Barnes' plant and other plants in Newfoundland. There are 10 of those, in small communities, each supporting about 160 direct jobs and all kinds of spinoff jobs. There are about 250 fishing enterprises with very heavy debt loads that are trying to survive in that business.
For most years out of the first 10 in offshore-sector fishing in area 6, their landings were zero. When you see those tables I've presented, once the headings get translated—the numbers are the same in French and English—those will show that.... In fact, there was no history for that fleet, in the area where these gentlemen fish, until about 1987. This fleet, the inshore fleet, started in 1997. In fact, as I indicated, Mr. Genge fished in the gulf before there were any offshore boats licensed to fish shrimp in Atlantic Canada.
Last week I sat in on a presentation by DFO scientists. The implications of what they said for the future of rural Newfoundland and Labrador were very serious. As I said, there's a tsunami coming, and we have to decide if we're going to get plywood for the windows or just take a chance on not getting hit by flying glass. I think what is important out of this process is that what they talked about gets acted on in terms of putting out scenarios of where they see the resource going and then doing economic analyses to understand what that means for the people—I guess for Canadians generally, but in particular, for the people of coastal Newfoundland and Labrador. It's very serious, and I would certainly hope the committee would endorse that being done in a transparent manner.
The same factors that led to the crash of groundfish stocks 20-odd years ago—the warming water conditions that the scientists spoke to—also allowed the shrimp to blossom.
The original press release that Minister Mifflin, at the time, put out made no mention of LIFO. That acronym did not appear in that document. That came up several years later.
He did have thresholds in place. If the stock fell below a certain threshold, then there was protection for the offshore. The graphs in here will show it. From 2000 to 2010, the inshore share averaged 40%. Now it's less than 30%. The LIFO, when it was first implemented, made no reference to allocations. It first showed up in the plan six years after Mifflin's press release. It was another four years before LIFO was applied to allocations.
I want to deal with the claim that the offshore received virtually none of the increase. That was mentioned by several witnesses who appeared before you. They did not give the full picture.
In fact if you look at the entire northern shrimp fishery in all the areas, in 2007, when then Minister Hearn changed the temporary permits that Mr. Watkins and others held over to regular licences, the offshore share of northern shrimp was 63,500 and the inshore share was 64,800—roughly the same. This year the offshore share will be the same as it was then—63,000. The inshore share will be 33,000. So to suggest that the offshore got none of the increase is simply not true and is taking absolute liberties with the facts.