Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. I would like to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to speak here. I think I met some of you guys back in 2016 when you were at the beautiful Fogo Island Inn back on Fogo Island. Do you remember that? Anyway, it's good to see you again.
My name is Glen Best, as you've heard, and I'm a fish harvester from Fogo Island on the northeast coast of Newfoundland. My brother and I, and my father, now to a lesser degree, operate a multi-species fishing business, and I stress the word “business”, because fishing has become an industry that takes substantial money to operate, to be viable, and to create good well-paid jobs for the owners and the crew members. Our family has invested in the vicinity of $5 million to $7 million in capital to build our business, acquiring vessels, licences, and gear, a great accomplishment and one to be proud of, I think.
The one common feeling that I get throughout the industry and with all the fishermen I speak to is the feeling of frustration, and that's frustration with a capital F. You heard that frustration from the witnesses who already spoke. Everyone is frustrated, and that frustration grows every year. Every year, there are new rules that restrict us in how we run our fishing operation, whether it be less quota, leasing rules, season dates, trip amounts, or catch rules, and the list goes on. I could go on for an hour.
There's one common thing that I hear amongst harvesters, which is that we need flexibility in running our business. We can't put more fish in the ocean, but we can work together to try to help one another with the limited resource we have. By that, I'm referring to buddy-up, in which one fisher can go aboard with another fisher, and together they can catch one another's fish. That keeps costs down, therefore putting more money in the hands of the harvester.
For example, I'll give you our own personal experience. It's similar to the experiences you've heard about. My brother had a 55-foot longliner. He made a decision to sell it in 2016 and replace it with a better boat. Shortly after the agreement to sell was finalized, the shrimp quota got cut by 40%, in 2016. You have to realize that shrimp was our biggest money-maker at that time. DFO gave him a year to start building a new vessel.
Fast-forward to 2017. Shrimp was cut another 62%. Another 16% is forecast for 2018. From 2015 to 2017, he went from approximately 400,000 pounds of shrimp to 88,000 pounds, so you can imagine that taking that much product and revenue out of your business is devastating. Shrimp was our biggest revenue generator. How can you replace a boat with such a loss in revenue?
Since we already have two vessels.... At one point we had four, and we did some combining and got down to three, and then sold a boat, and now we're at two, because you have rationalize our business. Since we already have two vessels that are underutilized and sit at the dock for approximately nine months of the year, I think we should be able to buddy up and catch his quota on the two other boats we have. That would give us flexibility to divide the resource challenges.
He can combine his quota, and that's fine. He can combine it with me and probably split it with me and my dad. But why should he, after a lifetime of fishing, lose his core enterprise and be forced to sell it or combine it? By that means, he'll also lose his cod shares, his core status, his groundfish. Maybe down the road he'll want to re-enter the fishery as things change. Why can't we at least try buddy-up for a period of time to see how it works out? There have to be options.
There are a lot of other cases out there where fishers want to work together, be they brothers, family operators, or strangers. I know of a father who was one of the most aggressive fisherman on the northeast coast. He caught one hell of a lot of fish, probably the most fish on the northeast coast down our way. He had to sell his enterprise because he couldn't give it to his son to catch.... His son had a 65-footer. He was a young fellow in the fishery and he wanted to go on. He had maxed out his combining; he couldn't take that product and grow his business. His father ended up selling his business, selling out. That was a detriment to that young fellow who wanted to be in this million-dollar industry.
Today, we're at a very sad place in the fishery—some might say desperate—where most stocks are in trouble. Capelin are down 70%, says the latest stock status report. Shrimp in Area 6 are at an all-time low in the time series. For turbot, we have a very small quota, with foreign vessels getting the biggest portion of the quota. With the high participation rate in the Canadian fishery for our portion of the quota, that means the people who participate get a very low share, maybe 50,000 pounds maximum. Cod is showing a 30% decrease in biomass this year, when everybody was pushing with the hope of a renewed cod fishery to replace dwindling shellfish stocks. Now more than ever, we need flexibility to run our businesses. We need to be able to work together.
Should a fisher be forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions, when it doesn't make sense to do so? Should five brothers—or strangers, for that matter—be forced to invest in a boat to catch 3,000 pounds of cod a week when they could buddy up and put more dollars in their pockets? Should we overcapitalize this industry to a point where it puts more pressure on the resource, so that the fish must fit the people instead of the people fitting the fish? I think we have a history of already doing that. What suffers? The fish.
The fishing industry in Newfoundland has serious problems. The high price of crab right now is the only thing that keeps the fleets viable. If you took two bucks a pound off crab this year, we would have vessels that would not untie from the dock. If people want to combine and take on more debt, that's fine. I'm all for combining. Fill your boots. Go ahead, but I think we need more options, and one of those is buddying up. We have done that. We have combined. We have spent millions of dollars combining. Still, give people the option to buddy up and have the flexibility besides combining alone.
The fishing has changed and the licensing rules have to change also. There are options in short-term leasing. I'll repeat what Mr. Careen said. Some groups in Newfoundland, I understand, can lease for one day. In Nova Scotia, you can lease for 30 days. A guy from Nova Scotia can come to Newfoundland and fish on a short-term lease, finish fishing in Newfoundland, and go back home to Nova Scotia to fish. In Newfoundland, we have to do a 12-month change of registration. If we had had that changed, we could have worked that scenario for ourselves instead of being forced to sell our enterprises or combining up.
On the issue of vessel capacity, I don't know if there is a truly competitive fishery out there anymore. Crab has IQs, and capelin, herring, shrimp, and turbot are all on trip or cap limits. Vessel size and capacity don't really play into it as a big factor. If a guy has the ability to get that bigger boat for his reasons, be they safety, efficiency, or otherwise, it should be his decision if it doesn't ultimately hurt the resource.
I feel that the industry in Newfoundland has come to a point where everybody must be managed down to one common denominator. There's no incentive for a person to be aggressive or grow. This was backed by a DFO official at your committee meeting on February 15, 2018. It was said that even in an IQ fishery, a larger vessel would have a competitive advantage over a smaller boat on preferential fishing grounds. I always thought DFO's mandate was to manage the fish and the stocks, not control competition.
I understand that fishing has a social aspect to it too. I agree that we should try to keep independence in the industry so that a few don't control the wealth. That said, we must have the ability to make a good living with the resources we have and to work together. A lot of the rules that are supposed to keep us independent are actually doing the opposite. If you're forced to sell your licence or buy a licence to combine with your own, which in turn causes you to have a high debt level that's not sustainable, is that making you more independent? I don't think so.
In closing, I would say to Minister LeBlanc that changes in the Fisheries Act are supposed to strengthen the owner/operator policy. That policy only works if we have something to catch.
Almost all stocks, if not all, are in states of decline. Capelin, cod, and shrimp are examples. Science says that we're not fishing a large part of the biomass, so what's happening in the ocean? We have to consider the fact that there are seven to eight million harp seals alone out there in the environment right now, by DFO estimates. If seven million seals eat just one pound of fish a day—and I'm being very conservative—for 365 days, that would equate to 1,161,000 tonnes of fish. That's one pound for one animal each day. That's 1,161,000 tonnes of something that lives in the ocean, whether it be capelin, cod, shrimp, or herring. The list goes on. The question has to be asked: if the ecosystem is so out of balance, can those species ever rebuild themselves?
Then there's the issue of seismic testing. What is that doing to the species that live in the ocean, to the larvae, to the phytoplankton? We have new MPAs that have just been announced under the Fisheries Act, which are supposed to protect habitat and in turn help fish species thrive. In those same areas, the oil and gas industry still operates with no change. Seismic work carries on now more than ever. These are the issues we face today.
In the meantime, it comes back to my earlier comments. We have serious resource problems. How do we work with what we have so we can have the strongest viable enterprise possible that can attract young people and eliminate the negativity associated with fishing? I'm sad to say that I've probably been part of that negativity, because one day I said to my son, who is 20 years old, “Would you be interested in going fishing?” He said, “Dad, why would I when all I've heard is negativity?” It sort of sticks a knife in you.
In my opinion, we need flexibility. The way we're operating now is not good enough. When you guys were on Fogo Island last time on September 28, 2016, a committee member asked me, after I spoke, what the committee could do to help us. I'm asking you to pass on to the minister the fact that we need a change in licensing rules in the industry, because the status quo is not working.
Thank you very much.
