Thank you.
What I was saying is that we don't necessarily want a recreational fishery here. It's a food fishery. We do this for food. It's the same with respect to anything we hunt and fish in Newfoundland. It's done for food. I know this is called recreational, but we basically still hunt and fish for food. At least the people I represent do.
The cod fishery is like five tags per day, but for the length of the season, it's just not practical anymore. In our inland cod fishery, the number of cod that Newfoundlanders take out of the ocean is extremely limited.
We never ever sell codfish, never. What I'm suggesting to Ottawa, and to the powers that be, is that if someone is caught selling a codfish, you basically charge them. It's simple. We don't do that.
With respect to salmon, currently this is the only province in Atlantic Canada and Quebec where you can keep an Atlantic salmon to eat. We don't necessarily hook and release. Hook and release kills fish. They may survive the hooking and they may survive the releasing initially, but afterwards they die. If you hook and release fish, right now we have four fish per day that we can hook and release. Actually in some cases it's six fish. I can retain two and release four. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island have hook and release only for salmon.
Our position is that if we can't hook and keep a salmon, then close the rivers. If the rivers are in that bad a shape and you can't retain a salmon to eat, then close it, period, no ifs, ands or buts. I have read in numerous studies that sometimes small fish, if they're caught within a small timeframe, can be released and some of them do survive. There's a website that shows you how to release salmon and that salmon can be released. It may go to the spawning grounds, but does it spawn? I have not seen any study that shows me that a released salmon will spawn when it goes to the spawning bed.
Newfoundland and Labrador Wildlife Federation will never support hook and release of salmon. Now, we have four tags on some rivers, and some rivers two. The river I fish has four tags. I've caught a lot of salmon in my day. I've been fishing since I was 11 years old. Four tags, I can live with that. We would like to have not an additional tag, but we would like to have probably a tag with a colour that's provincial. I know that's provincial now and you get jurisdictions mangled across the board. We would like to have an extra tag that can be put on a large fish but is interchangeable. If you don't use it for a fish over 63 centimetres, then you can use it for a fish under 63 centimetres. That's where we're coming from, fishing for fun. Initially, catching a salmon, hooking a salmon is fun. Landing a salmon is not a big deal.
I'll tell you now that I've been fishing since I was 11 years old. I can stand in the river and I can hook and release all day. Nobody will charge me with anything if I use a barbless hook. I can use a smaller leader. I can let the fish go. The fish can escape from me, no problem. I can hook all day and release salmon all day. It is not enforceable. Hooking and releasing salmon is not enforceable. Catching four fish a day, again I'll tell you, is not enforceable.
We've already asked for two licences, the way it is in Quebec, a hook-and-release licence and a hook-and-retain licence like the one we already have, but again, there's provincial jurisdiction. Nobody is willing to accept that. We're willing to go that far and see how many people would take up a hook and release licence. If salmon fishermen out there believe so much in hook and release, then give them a hook-and-release licence. Ask them to buy one and make it cheaper, if you want. There won't be any tags involved.
Seals eat salmon. I worked with DFO for a number of years. Seals do eat salmon, not necessarily in tremendous amounts, but they do eat salmon, and we do have a salmon fishery off the south coast, the only section of the south coast where COSEWIC has determined that the salmon is in dire straits.
Also on the south coast we do have aquaculture of wild Atlantic salmon, open-pen aquaculture. It has been proven that closed-pen aquaculture can be done. It may be a little more expensive but it can be done. From B.C. the fish are on the market. People are buying them. Closed containment salmon farming can be done. Just recently, the Newfoundland government, which monitors aquaculture on the south coast, gave an exorbitant amount of money to increase the production of open-pen fish farming on the south coast. We are suggesting that we have feasibility studies and pilot projects on closed containment on land. We can do those on the south coast. We can do them inland and we have a pilot project to do the same.
It is not rocket science. It is already done, yet we're pouring an exorbitant amount of money into open-pen farming and, guys, it doesn't work. Those fish are diseased. Also, you don't need any money. Basically, if the fish are diseased—they get ISA, which is a salmon disease—the federal government takes the salmon, kills the salmon, and gives you some money. So you're not losing anything. You don't lose anything.