Fisheries committee  As we mentioned at the start, the goal of inshore fishermen is to be able to fish a number of species. The 1,200 fishermen in New Brunswick want more opportunities for a reasonable standard of living. Over the years, the snow crab fishery has clearly proven to be crucial to achie

Fisheries committee  There have been a number of licence withdrawal programs in the past. Normally, licences are withdrawn and the resource returns. So we have to be very careful. As a number of studies show, you have to make sure you have conservation measures in exchange for improving what you leav

Fisheries committee  We've often heard that the crab supplied by inshore fishermen was of lesser quality. We've often wondered why. Plant managers claimed that the quality was lower. We wanted to check to see why. In doing that, we realized that practice of some fishermen was to select the highest qu

Fisheries committee  It means they're put back into the sea. Very often a large percentage of what is put back into the sea won't survive.

Fisheries committee  Studies were conducted by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans over the period from 2004 to 2007. They showed the net incomes of inshore lobster fishermen. And you're right, Mr. LeBlanc, the lobster fishery represents the largest share of fishermen's incomes. There's also the s

Fisheries committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, committee members and members of the public. Thank you for inviting us. I'm going to speak to you today on behalf of André Martin, our president. He obviously can't be here as he is fishing for lobster. I'm going to provide you with some brief backg

Fisheries committee  The associations that have joined together in this alliance have mostly concentrated on the lobster industry. There are implications for other industries, and other industries might join or prepare some form of proposal in light of, or inspired by, this. But these associations ar

Fisheries committee  Well, I guess the really short answer is that it's about both. I think it's about an equilibrium. When we look at sustainability, I think we've all learned that it's difficult to divide and economize on the individual participants, the fish harvesters, and the resource. I would

Fisheries committee  We've had an enormous amount of difficulty getting figures for New Brunswick. We initially held a number of meetings. The province of New Brunswick also took some steps to obtain the information. It's very hard to get information on our province. We know that there is a large in

Fisheries committee  As I explained a little earlier, the idea is to create a fund in order to arrive at a lobster rationalization solution. The details on that amount are obviously substantiated in the document. We developed a calculation based on the Atlantic Canada fleets that are having viabilit

Fisheries committee  That's what we believe. That doesn't mean that will happen. Obviously, market forces are at times very hard to predict. We've experienced that in recent years. We think there is an enormous inventory. There is also what we call a glut or bottleneck of lobster coming out at the s

Fisheries committee  We feel that it's an essential piece in this puzzle. It has been driven and led, in our view, by a lot of the processing sector concerns, but there's always a process, you know, and you change that process along the way. You begin with a very large view. I think we were heading t

Fisheries committee  There are copies of the larger proposal document floating around. I think you'll find a lot of details in there that could generate some discussion.

Fisheries committee  I do think there will be more lay-offs by the start of the season. The fishermen have done their best, with the means at their disposal, to communicate with all those people and to convince them of the situation that could arise. I don't think the fishermen yet realize what could

Fisheries committee  Yes.