That sounds good, okay.
I'm David MacKay, and I'm a fifth-generation commercial fish harvester from the coastal community of Pender Harbour, where I was born and raised. I participate in the roe herring gillnet fishery and the northern salmon troll and gillnet fishery.
I have been back in the industry for about six years now, and it's been difficult. I think one of the big notes I want to hit here does touch on ITQs and I can talk about that, too, but one of the notes I want to hit here is about married licences.
Here's just a little history that you guys may know. When we went to area licensing, licences for salmon were separated into three troll licences, three areas of gillnet, and then two seine areas. Vessel owners and operators who wanted to fish all the areas had to buy those licences. Instead of owning one before, they had to buy those area licences. Our department has made it impossible to separate them, so we call them married licences. I'd like to see the married licences disappear. I think every fisherman I've talked to has said the exact same thing, and that's my key note here that I want to speak on.
When we separate licences, we allow an individual licence to be purchased by a young harvester. What's happening right now is that my father and lots of other guys are getting ready to retire from the industry, and they have two, three or more licences and they can't sell that as a package to anyone. So it ends up going through PICFI or they just hold on to it, and they're in their old age. Being able to unmarry them would help them divest in the industry; it would help somebody young get into the industry. It's a simple solution, and it's being done through PICFI. Once the licences go through PICFI, they are being broken up, so what is the problem? Why are we not doing that? That's my biggest concern.
I just heard another instance about the troll retirement program. I think I have a couple of minutes here, but I'll quickly speak on this. The Pacific Salmon Treaty is a voluntary salmon troll licence retirement program—it's a real mouthful. If I had a troll licence I'd just married to my boat and I wanted to divest in the industry and I wanted to get rid of that—just that one licence—I couldn't. However, through this program I can voluntarily retire it through basically a round process. I think we've retired more than 100 licences on our coast in the three different troll areas—106, I believe, or around there. There were 400 applications since October 31, 2016. Those 106 licences have disappeared off our coast completely; they retired. That's 106 boats, or 106 jobs times the crew. This is the problem. It seems like a really simple solution, so I just wanted to touch on that. I'm sure we'll have some questions on it later.
That's my intro. Thank you again to the committee for having us. I'll pass on the microphone.