Thank you very much.
My name is Emily. I am the lead representative of the Prawn Industry Caucus. I'm also the business agent for the United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union, a director for the commercial fishing caucus, and a member of the COVID-19 Active Fishermen's Committee.
I have fished prawns commercially for 12 years. I began with my father when I was 19, and worked my way up to running the boat myself, so I do have some experience prawn fishing and prawn tubbing. I have fished in other fisheries as well, but prawn remains dear to my heart.
I am very privileged to be here to represent active commercial prawn harvesters, and the work of the PIC is advocacy and representation for harvesters.
As we've heard already today and over the past few months, this reinterpretation by DFO of prawn tubbing—that it no longer meets its definition of what “readily determined” looks like—is incredibly troubling to this industry and the Canadian public.
The interference with the general community's access to a common property resource by buying seafood harvest directly from the vessels is an attack on the basic foundation of the community, which is access to food from the food producers. We are very much hoping to have some logic and reason brought to this issue, and we're very grateful to this committee for taking time to focus on this issue.
Given that there's been a lot of detail provided already about how we've arrived at this issue, and what the timeline has been since learning of the DFO's reinterpretation, I'll focus my comments more on what this reinterpretation would do to impact commercial harvesters.
The fishery is typically quite short and lasts only 40 days. Harvesters that can freeze prawn tails for sale to the domestic market have the ability to prolong their income, and achieve a greater price per pound than what is paid by the wholesale market. That increased profit is due to the additional time and effort that is required to package those prawns in smaller portions, as compared to a wholesale offload that is happening daily in the live market, or for bulk loads of frozen product that is going overseas.
That connection to community that is also achieved by local people being able to purchase prawns directly from their harvesters is really important to the fishing community, and it's important to the people who live close to the docks that they're able to access that food.
When we talk about the longevity of the income, in terms of spreading the opportunity across a year outside of that 40-day season, it's really important to consider that many harvesters, especially in the last couple of years, have been faced with very low prices for wholesale prawns. When they're able to sell individual tubs to the community members, they're achieving a much greater profit for their product.
This last year has definitely saved many harvesters, allowing them to go to either breaking even or to actually being able to make a profit. Some harvesters have come to me and told me that if they had not been able to sell their frozen prawn tubs over the winter to their community members, they would have gone backwards.
There's a terrific cost to going fishing. To make a profit, several thousand pounds need to be caught right off the bat in order for the expenses to be looked after before anybody will make money. Being able to sell prawns, frozen in tubs, is something that is incredibly critical to the viability of fish harvesters.
In this situation, we're very much hoping for a review of this reinterpretation and one that can provide an avenue for us to support C and P in its responsibility to uphold the regulations, and one that also accepts the freezing of prawn tails in tubs.
We have proposed that a condition of licence be added that defines what “readily determined” means, and then provides wording that would request, and require prawn harvesters to thaw tubs of prawns in a set amount of time—less than five minutes, for example—upon an inspection request by C and P.
We feel this is a very reasonable way forward to resolve this for everybody and for all parties to move on, and we're very much hoping the work of this committee will facilitate that.
Thank you very much.