Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good evening, committee members. Thank you very much for the invitation to speak here today. The members of the Bay of Fundy Inshore Fishermen's Association are grateful for this opportunity to voice our concerns. The association represents nearly 200 family fishing businesses along Nova Scotia's Fundy coast. For 30 years, we have advocated for sustainable practices and community-based fishing management. We have been a leader in peaceful coexistence between non-indigenous and first nations fishers, and we have a long history of co-operation with governments and regulators at all levels. This has given us a reputation as a valuable ally on ocean issues. Needless to say, our members are proud of their legacy as progressive fishers who embrace a different way of doing things. We are all committed, one hundred per cent, to preserving our way of life for future generations of Nova Scotians.
I came here today in defence of a 400-year-old truly sustainable way of life. Last year, the fishing industry exported well over two billion dollars' worth of seafood from Nova Scotia. We are not a quaint, cottage industry. Fishing is the economic powerhouse of this province. It employs 26,000 people directly and 26,000 people indirectly. That makes our industry the largest employer outside of the public sector in Nova Scotia today. But these numbers do not tell the whole story. What's important to understand is how that $2 billion is delivered as a diffuse economic benefit into some of the most isolated communities in Nova Scotia. This is truly the lifeblood of our economy and the only bulwark between the current prosperity enjoyed in many coastal communities here and the drastic economic decline evident elsewhere in rural Atlantic Canada.
The fishing industry did not get to this stage by happenstance. It is due to hard work, respect for the environment and the application of the precautionary principle in fisheries management. We have taken care of our inshore fishery, and now it is taking care of us.
The Bay of Fundy Inshore Fishermen's Association respects and supports indigenous fishery access rights, and we condemn explicitly all acts of violence in the fishery. This begs the important question today of why recently we have suddenly found ourselves in a conflict when we have had 21 years along the road of mutual peaceful coexistence. In his day, my great-grandfather fished from our small cove on the Bay of Fundy in peace and coexistence with African Nova Scotians and Mi'kmaq fishers. We all had things in common—our reliance on and respect for the sea and its bounty, and most importantly of all, extreme poverty. Since that time, terrible things have been done to Mi'kmaq fishers by colonialism and by the government effectively dispossessing them of their right to fish. My grandfather and the others who shared the cove didn't do that to indigenous people; the government did. We should all accept that this is still the case in the present conflict. The problems in St. Marys Bay have been caused in Ottawa, not in our fishing communities of Nova Scotia.
This division is being driven by just that, division in its own right. I have spent my life fighting for social justice for fishermen, regardless of heritage. The government's current attempt to divide us for political reasons is at the core of this conflict. All of our communities, both indigenous and non-indigenous, rely on one lobster resource, and the lobster does not care who catches it. What's really at the centre of the current crisis in St. Marys Bay is sustainability. Lobster landings during the last three years have declined by 65% within St. Marys Bay, while they remain strong across the wider lobster district and across Atlantic Canada.
What is evident is how important it is for all people who participate in commercial fisheries to operate under one set of rules. During my youth, I witnessed the horrors of what happens when politics enters fisheries management. What happened was the total extermination of ground fish stocks on the Scotian Shelf, and it had horrible consequences for all communities in Nova Scotia. Subsequently the lobster industry has been managed with an organic set of management procedures developed by the industry, for the industry. Its outcome has been an incredibly lucrative, well-managed fishery.
Currently, I see the re-entry of politics into fisheries management in Nova Scotia, and I don't want those outcomes for my community, and I don't want them for indigenous communities.
All the remedies for fishermen on both sides of this equation are evident in the Marshall decision as it stands. We must all respect the Marshall decision in all its parts and apply it to achieve peace in Atlantic Canada.
I would draw your attention to section 40 of the Marshall clarification, which clearly says:
The paramount regulatory objective is conservation and responsibility for it is placed squarely on the minister responsible and not on the aboriginal or non-aboriginal users of the resource.