Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to address the committee today.
The Grand Manan Fishermen's Association represents inshore commercial fisherman on Grand Manan Island. Grand Manan is located in the mouth of the Bay of Fundy and is about a one and a half hour ferry ride to mainland New Brunswick. Our population has been steady, at around 2,500 for the past 200 years. While aquaculture and tourism contribute to the economy of the island, it is most dependent on the health and prosperity of the fishery.
Members of our organization are owner-operators. They own their own boats and licences and fish them themselves. They are small business owners who generally employ at least two other people besides the captain, and there are about 100 of them on our island. The fact that fishermen operate small businesses and offer good employment opportunities in rural coastal communities is often lost in the discussion about the fisheries.
Our fishermen fish lobster, scallops, groundfish, and herring. Lobsters were our primary species, with a landed value of close to $80 million on Grand Manan in 2014-15, the last year that statistics were available. New Brunswick's GDP grew last year based on the growth from resource industries, including fisheries. Despite the way the fishery is sometimes depicted, we are a growing, healthy industry.
Traditionally our lobster market has been primarily the United States, with much of the catch moving through the Boston market. The economic downturn in 2008 combined with increased lobster catch throughout the Maritimes changed that. While the U.S. is still a primary market, more markets have opened up in Europe, and more recently an emerging Asia market, which has allowed the industry to diversify its dependence on any one economy.
As such, we are very interested in trade and in securing market access for our products, particularly in Asia. The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is of keen interest to us. However, we note that China is not part of it and have concerns about what that may mean.
We, with many other inshore fishermen's groups across the country, are members of a national organization, the Canadian Independent Fish Harvesters' Federation. This federation represents the independent fleet sector of the Canadian fishing industry and wants to participate in the discussion about our trade policy. We want to be able to do so from an informed perspective.
It has been frustrating that there has been very little information forthcoming about the portions of the TPP that could and will impact fisheries. We are requesting that there be a briefing provided to the federation specific to the fisheries issues.