Thank you very much. I've timed it for just under nine, so hopefully I'll get there.
On behalf of the Association of Seafood Producers, I am pleased to appear before this committee, and I thank you for the invitation.
I'll give you a quick overview of the ASP, our role and work and who we represent, and then provide some brief remarks on our perspectives on northern cod going forward.
ASP is an industry association. It represents the majority of seafood producers in the province by volume and value. Our members include small, medium-sized, and large companies. Most are family owned and several are harvester owned. They are all invested uniquely in rural Newfoundland and Labrador; there are not too many fish plants here on the waterfront in the city. A few have access to their own quotas for some species, but most buy from the independent inshore fleet represented by my colleague, Mr. Keith Sullivan.
ASP's members produce a wide range of species available to the commercial fishery. Our members produce the majority of snow crab and inshore shrimp, at close to 80% or 90% of both, which represent most of the value in the fishery in the province. They also produce a vast majority of pelagic species available to us, such as capelin, herring, and mackerel. We do a fair bit of the groundfish, including cod.
All of what we produce, or most of it, is exported. Our markets are the world over, including North America, Europe, Africa, and, increasingly, Asia, year after year. As an association, we engage in the usual range of activities appropriate to a trade association, including public policy, government, media relations, and services to members. Those services include serving as the client of the first Marine Stewardship Council eco-certification in Canada, for northern shrimp. It was the largest such certified shrimp district in the world at the time, and the first on the eastern seaboard of North America.
As you will know, the MSC is a third party audited standard for fishery sustainability to assure the world—our markets—that our products come from sustainable fisheries in terms of what we harvest in terms of habitat and ecosystems and the management regime. We're now the client for four different certifications covering shrimp in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Nova Scotia, and in Newfoundland and Labrador, and for snow crab in the province. Our members hold other certificates as well.
As somewhat of an anomaly in the industry, we also negotiate fish prices for 67 species per year, as our industry is subject to collective bargaining legislation. That takes up a fair bit of our work.
I have worked for ASP as executive director since 2004, and I have served as chair of the board since 2006. I've also served on the FRCC, the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, and on a number of other fisheries or other related advisory bodies.
The reason why you're here, and the reason why we're here, is cod. Cod, to state the obvious, is important. As I often say, it's part of the cultural, social, political, and economic history of this province. We were but an island in the sea and essentially a platform for the seasonal prosecution of the fishery by Europeans. We were later a place of habitation, a colony, and then a country, and now are a province of Canada. Cod, to use a French expression, is our raison d'être. It was the stock market of Europe and the livelihood of our people. It's sad, but we all know the story with the word “moratorium”. Just to say it, says it all.
In recent years, the work of DFO and the Centre for Fisheries Ecosystem Research, CFER, at the marine institute, suggests an increase in biomass for northern cod, and yet—and this is my take-away point—it must be underscored that the fishery is not yet rebuilt. ASP is of the view that a general strategy of restraint is required in our approach to northern cod.
As we wrote to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans last year, “a general strategy of restraint grounds any and all increases in science, avoids past mistakes, accelerates stock recovery, and protects the substantial investments that will be required for modernization and for market development”. That restraint includes adherence to the PA framework, the precautionary approach framework to which DFO is itself committed. DFO has said that its precautionary approach framework will guide decisions. The Association of Seafood Producers supports that adherence.
In that regard, it should be noted that stock-building has yet to occur. The biomass remains in the critical zone at just over one-third of Blim. In DFO's PA framework, this means removals must be kept to a minimum. In “Northern cod comeback”, published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences last year, authors Rose and Rowe suggest that with frugal stock management and low fishing mortality, “this stock could rebuild, perhaps within less than a decade”.
Again, to underscore the point, the stock is not yet rebuilt.
ASP is also on record as supporting the position contained in the DFO's Canadian science advisory secretariat's science response from last year, which reads in part that “removals should be kept low to promote stock growth”.
We have noted before in correspondence to the minister, and in concurrence with the FRCC report on groundfish from 2011 titled “Towards recovered and sustainable groundfish fisheries in Eastern Canada: a report to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans”, of which I have a copy here, past instances of growth in biomass have been cropped off by premature quota increases.
I was pleased to serve on the FRCC at the time of that report, and I want to reiterate its findings today. Past instances of growth have been cropped off. We want to avoid that, and I think all stakeholders want to avoid it. It remains imperative, therefore, that we follow the science and not get ahead of it. We have to avoid being led by an impressionistic sense of what's out there or by open line radio.
This fishery is being watched with increased scrutiny by our fellow Canadians and the international community, and appropriately so. It's an iconic fishery for collapse, and the world is right to watch what we do. We support erring on the side of caution, not just for the international perspective on northern cod, but because it is appropriate in reality, as per “A Harvest Strategy Compliant with the Precautionary Approach” adopted by DFO. Removals have to be kept to a minimum by necessity, and the low level of removals to date in this stock have been key to the recovery, such as we have seen to date.
Northern cod, it must be acknowledged, is not just an icon or an interesting case study for international observers or for national fisheries management and science. At the end of the day, rebuilding matters to industry participants represented here at this table. Again, the 2011 FRCC report said, “This rebuilding will require sustainable fishing practices, economically viable enterprises and the production of quality, high value products that find acceptance in global markets.”
In an era of increased whitefish supply in international markets, both wild capture and aquaculture, northern cod will be of most value when it supports a modern industry that is economically sustainable with premium quality fish. We're not there yet either. There is some concern, well placed, that we cannot “get there from here” in terms of the structure.
We also acknowledge and support the minister's commitment to ensuring the implementation of a “licence and tags regime for all recreational fish participants...expected to be introduced prior to the 2017 season”. That is an important point.
In closing, let me say that we invite, as always, DFO's continuing collaboration with the industry. We acknowledge DFO's support for our northern cod fisheries improvement project, FIP, which ASP is developing in conjunction with the Groundfish Enterprise Allocation Council, or GEAC. That project, like all FIPs, is designed to help prepare northern cod for eventual MSC certification.
MSC, I'd like to remind people, is the democracy of the marketplace, making third party attestations as to the sustainability of seafood products in the marketplace. It is telling to recall that MSC was developed on the back of the groundfish moratorium here in the early 1990s.
The world is watching. Whatever we do with groundfish, and cod in particular, we must do it right if it is to sustain us many years hence. We can be sure now, as we face the prospects of ecosystem change, that the decrease of more valuable shellfish and the resurgence of lesser value per unit groundfish will bring untold pressures to bear on industry participants and the managers. We face some difficult years of transition ahead.
Again, thank you for your time. I'm available for any questions you might have.
Thank you.