Thank you, Mr. Chair and the committee, on behalf of the Maritime Fishermen's Union for giving us the opportunity to speak today.
Our organization represents over 1,300 independent inshore owner-operator fishermen in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
We are grateful that all parties supported changes in the Fisheries Act that protected owner-operators and fleet separation in legislation, with the purpose of keeping Atlantic Canada's public resources in the hands of fishers in their communities and protecting the inshore fisheries from corporate control and influence. However, we are still very much at risk of losing our fisheries from other angles.
In recent years, mom-and-pop, family-run and community-based fishing and processing enterprises have been on the international menu to be bought and agglomerated by large corporate interests owned by foreign nationals—