Mr. Speaker, this is a follow-up to a question about a policy that was put in place in northeastern Newfoundland on fisheries management. It is about the northern shrimp issue.
Before I get to that, however, I would like to express my condolences in the House to the people of the town of Cottlesville. They have a plant there that employs 150 to 200 people. This past early Sunday, the plant burned down completely, and it is not to reopen. We now have 150 to 200 people out of work who are trying to find work. It is so difficult within these communities because of the nature of the seasonal work and because of how small they are and how dependent they are on the fishery.
Back to the policy in question, what I had asked about was what is called LIFO, or last in, first out.
When it comes to cuts in the shrimp sector, there are basically two sectors we talk about: the offshore and the inshore. In the offshore, there are much larger boats and factory trawlers. They are well off the shores, so they harvest the shrimp, they process it there, and it goes to market. Yes, they provide employment for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. That is true.
The inshore sector is the one people see if they have watched a show called Cold Water Cowboys. Those are the boats. These boats are certainly less than 65 feet. In this particular sector are the vast majority of people who live in small fishing villages and on the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. That is where they work. They work either on the boat or in the plants that process the shrimp itself.
With drastic cuts in shrimp because of the fact that the stocks have declined, cuts had to be made on quotas for each sector. The problem is that the government made in excess of a 25% cut for the inshore sector and only a small cut for the offshore sector.
If we face drastic cuts like this, the entire sector and all the individuals and stakeholders within it should share in that pain. It is an uneven and unfair regime. It does not comply with what we call adjacency, with the people living closest to the resource, in this case, the area 6 shrimp fishing area, being top of mind. We are asking the government to review this type of management principle.
The government will contend that we came up with it as the Liberal Party in 1997. It was talked about, but it was never enacted.
The worst part about this is that the government is asking the inshore fleet, nearest the shore, to take the vast majority of the cuts. The problem is that in 2007, they asked them to invest in that fishery by making these licenses permanent.
This is the situation we are in. I hope that the government will reconsider the last in, first out policy, or as the locals like to say, me included, maybe we should have a FISHNL policy, which is “first in, still here, not leaving”.