Good afternoon, and thank you very much for letting me speak here today. I wasn't expecting this, so this is a very happy surprise.
Fishing for Success is here to respectfully request federal policy and regulatory support for our organization to have access to fish so that we can fully develop a youth cod fishery. I'm not here to talk about counting fish, or counting boats, or unions, or any of that. I'm talking about youth, and youth matters, because it doesn't matter what else you try to fix in the fishery if the young people aren't there to take it up. That's what we're concerned about.
I had the fortune of growing up in Newfoundland and Labrador pre-cod moratorium, and it was amazing, and that stuck with me. It made an impression on me, and I wanted to recreate that for young people in Newfoundland and Labrador today. I quit teaching high school science in Florida, a beautiful place where I was happy as a bug in a rug teaching stoichiometry and electron configurations. I would take my kids outside all the time and show them the natural environment, and I noticed that the kids were becoming more and more disconnected from nature. They didn't even know the plants and the animals in their own backyards, which they should know.
As I was coming home to Newfoundland to visit family, I noticed that communities weren't out around the community wharves the way they used to be. I grew up in Newfoundland. As a kid, you went down to the wharf and you helped haul out guts, and you helped cut out tongues, and you got to bring home a bag of fish to mother for supper. That wasn't happening any more. Kids weren't at the wharf because the fishery had changed. It wasn't cod anymore. The money fish was snow crab, and the boats had to be bigger to handle the bigger equipment. The wharves are concrete. There are swinging frozen blocks of bait overhead and forklifts, and that's no place for young people and families.
There are policies and regulations to protect our fish harvesters at work, as there should be, but where does that leave our young people and our families who now are disconnected from the fishing heritage? Think back to just less than about a 100 years ago, when about 100% of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians were involved in a family fishery. Think about your family farming that you were discussing. Then, in 1992, about 30% of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians were involved in the fishery, just before the cod moratorium. When I was growing up and could go down to the wharf and participate, there was that mentorship going on. You were at grandpa's elbow. You were at uncle's elbow. You were at nannie's elbow learning how to process the fish, and now, today, less than 2% of Newfoundlanders are involved in the commercial fishery.
Very soon, the stories of the fishing and the fish and the fishery won't even have a place in our families. There are children in St. John's who have not been in boats. There are children in St. John's who have not been fishing. Churchill once said that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians were the best small boatmen in the world, and he probably wouldn't say that today.
I took it upon myself to quit teaching high school in Florida, and I moved back home to Newfoundland, but before I did that I went to graduate school at the University of Florida in aquatic sciences and fisheries. I deliberately picked that school because they have a learn-to-fish program, so I could study that program before I set one up here in Newfoundland. Then I wanted to target a place. Where was I going to teach the kids?
St. John's would be great because that is where I would find the most urbanized youth. That's what I wanted: my target audience. I also had the benefit of it being where most tourists come into Newfoundland, so then I could have a pool of some revenue. I could have some tourism programs on the side, and then that could fund my youth programming, because youth programming is difficult to get funding for, so I had a double whammy.
Now, I'm in St. John's. Where am I going to have an active fishing community in St. John's? Well, wouldn't you know it that Petty Harbour has what's called a protected fishing area where they have maintained a handline fishery since 1895? When gillnets came online as a new technology, they voted them out. In fact, in 1964, by order in council, it was put into Canada's fisheries act that gillnets would be kept out of Petty Harbour, and today they fish with a handline and a single hook for their commercial cod fishery.
I even have a copy of the book today. If I weren't such a poor non-profit, I'd have a copy for everyone here today. That was important in teaching youth. You can go to www.islandrooms.org and find a digital copy that you can download that tells the history of it. That was important in teaching young people the state of our oceans today, with the monofilament plastic waste, the sustainable fishing, and all of that. Petty Harbour was it.
Now, how do I get my hands on historic fishing property? It usually gets handed down. I'm in the CSA now and I'm coming back from Florida. All right, so I finally get some property. I spend my own money on it. Now I get some people who are behind me, and we incorporate as a non-profit.
We put together this list of programs you have here on our own. We are up and running. We have a pilot youth cod fishery that we ran this summer with a small group of young people from Thrive. These are at-risk youth who were identified. They came out once a week this summer. They're going to graduate on September 27. We have a certificate for them.
They painted dories, corked dories, and went in the dories for a ride. They rinded sticks, which is a very traditional skill that you need in building fishing stages. We took them fishing. They processed their fish, and they got to take their fish home to their families.
Now keep in mind that these are at-risk youth, so the people they live with are probably food bank dependent. They got to bring home fresh fish, which is something you don't find in a food bank. This is a level of confidence and pride that you give these kids when they can actually bring fresh fish back. This is half of our first graduating class in the youth cod fishery.
I need federal support so that I can have access to fish, because we only had three weeks to do this. The extension to the weekend for the recreational fishery was of no help for us because social workers have no access to these young people on the weekends.
That's short and sweet, I guess. I could go on forever, because I've been developing this for about 11 years now.
Thank you very much.