Thank you for having me here today.
I'm a full-time fisherman from Calvert, Newfoundland. The first topic I'd like to talk on is the salmon. I hold a commercial salmon licence. I don't think we're getting a very fair shake with the way the salmon is going. It has been closed now for nearly over 28 years. When it closed, we were told by John Crosbie that it was going to be five years.
I don't think we're getting a very fair shake with the way it's going. It seems like we were blamed for destroying the salmon or whatever when they shut us off, but the statistics show that it wasn't us. They have closed the rivers and closed everywhere for the anglers and whatever. I listened to Gerry Byrne on the radio and the television as he blamed it on the poachers. Where is it going?
In my eyes, I think that if it opens again, we should be allowed to go back at it. It's either that or come up with some kind of a sensible buyout. There are only 43 of us. That's all that's left now out of 105. I can see no reason why they can't up with something to buy us out, to get us out of it if he wants. It's either that or, when he opens it, giving us the same thing they're giving us on the rivers. As far as I'm concerned, they threw us under the bus, and it's time for us now to stand up. I'll be 61 on my birthday, by the way, and I'm the youngest one of the 43 who are left.
The other topic I'd like to talk on is these core and non-core fishing licences. There are people who got caught up in the cracks on that.
This is an example. My father came home from the Second World War and started fishing. He fished that for, say, probably 40 or 50 years, I can't tell you. We fished together. I started when I was 15 years old and I drew a trap berth in Calvert. We all fished, every one of us. My father looked after the money. I was 15 years old and everything else.... Then, when the time came for him to get out of it, he could have sold it for $33,000. Instead of doing that, my mother's sisters and brothers fished with us. They are still with us and are loading boats today with crab pots while I'm here.
Somewhere along the way—I mean, I can't understand it and I can't get the right of it—he turned it over to him.... All he ever did was fish. He did nothing else, not another thing, only fish. I can't understand how that licence came to be non-core, which if someone could tell you or whatever, or something.... The other side of it is that we're still fishing together. He's in a boat that's 29 feet 11 inches. Now, codfish are coming back on stream. How is he supposed to go out? He had the same quota, the same thing as what the other man had. How is he supposed to go and fish in a 29 foot 11 inch boat, 70 miles or 80 miles out or whatever, against a fellow in a 65-foot or 45-foot boat?
There has to be something done with this system. You're either going to have to let those guys get a bigger boat.... I mean, if we leave to go, I'm towing him around in a 29-foot boat. It's all about safety. That's what they talk about, safety, so if it's all about safety I can't see why it is the way it is.
This year alone, I would say that some of those people are going to be grounded because they've got nothing to go fishing in, and they have the same amount of fish.... If I have 3,000 pounds of fish, on core, to the hills...and every kind of licence you can imagine, I have, right? If I'm allowed 3,000 pounds of fish, he's allowed 3,000 pounds of fish, but he is not allowed a boat to go and catch it. There's something definitely wrong, boy, with the system, whatever it is. I'd like to see something done with that part of it.
I'm going to give you another little scenario before I stop, because I'm an awful man to talk when I get going. I'm good at it, right?