Committee chair and members, thank you very much for this opportunity to share our views. I appear before you today on behalf of the Bay of Fundy Inshore Fishermen's Association, where I serve as president.
For 28 years we have represented owner-operator fishing families on the shores of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. Our group has a distinguished history of advocating sustainable fishing practices and community-based fisheries management. Over this time, our commitment to that responsible use of resources has led us to partnerships with many groups in academia and the conservation community. We have a history of co-operation with governments and regulators at all levels, earning us a reputation as a valuable ally on ocean issues. Our members are proud of this legacy and are committed to preserving our way of life for future generations of Nova Scotians.
Corporate concentration and foreign ownership are two sides of the same problem facing Canada's coastal communities. This is the clash between, on the one hand, medium-sized to large corporations that are solely focused on reaping ever-increasing profits from public resources and, on the other hand, the duty of government to protect the interests of fishing families, families that are existentially dependent on those same resources.
Primary issues relating to this are the conglomeration of lobster processing capacity into fewer and fewer hands and the unlawful purchasing of lobster licences by corporations outside the owner-operator framework that our members abide by.
The question that begs to be asked is why fishermen would be concerned about ownership changes in independent maritime lobster processors. The answer deserves attention by government for the benefit of fishing communities.
When fishermen sell their lobster catch tonight on the wharves of Nova Scotia, be it in Yarmouth, Sydney, Digby or Lunenburg, they can all expect to receive the same price, but in a free market situation, how can this be? Obviously, someone or some group is fixing that price. If not, fishermen would see variations in the price of their catch, based on normal supply and demand pressures from many different exporters. Instead, they face a concerted effort to control pricing at the dock.
These actions must be a violation of the federal Competition Act and may constitute a cartel. Section 45(1) of the act states, “Every person commits an offence who, with a competitor of that person with respect to a product, conspires, agrees or arranges to fix...the price...of the product”.
Fishermen recognize that lobster markets are ultimately influenced by consumer demand, but they also recognize the downward influence on lobster pricing from this collusion. Harvesters cannot ignore the clear message that a region-wide pricing fix sends.
After having already suffered for decades in this system, fear is now rising in our communities that things could become even worse due to an onslaught of acquisitions in the processing sector by food distribution mega-corporations, both foreign and domestic.
The second avenue whereby big business threatens the interests of fishing communities is through attempts to vertically integrate the lobster industry through the buying of lobster licences by unlawful means. These companies seek access to lobster at cheap prices and cut out fishing families in hopes of gaining an unfair and profitable advantage.
While DFO and the government have made significant progress on this front through recent changes to the Fisheries Act, the resolutions proposed by the department are simplistic, ignore huge opportunities for reconciliation and may ultimately be damaging to coastal communities.
Specifically, the department's plan to terminate lobster licences bought by these companies, while certainly demonstrating deterrence, is a policy direction that will be damaging to the prospects of new entrants to the fishery that changes to the act were meant to favour.
It also seems beyond reason that the department would ignore the potential for this access to integrate Marshall rights holders into Atlantic fisheries, especially while DFO continues to expropriate access to other species without compensation, arbitrarily move lobster access from one area to another in defiance of its own integrated fisheries management plan and make ominous statements about expropriation in lobster fisheries.
These issues will only be resolved through good faith collaboration between the government and Canada's fishing families. Regulators must recognize that small-scale users of Canadian resources deserve special consideration, given the huge yet diffuse economic and cultural benefits that they deliver to our communities.
Committee members, thank you very much. I invite questions.