Predictably, the Open Line crowd and likely a few others are excited about the Icelandic model. They are thinking that if Newfoundland and Labrador had become an independent state again in 1949, things in the fishery would be different.
Unfortunately, proponents of the Icelandic model don't tell you all that you need to know to make up you mind.
There's another predictable thing.
One of the big differences between Iceland and here is that Iceland runs its fishery as a business, not a social program.
There is no state-run income support for fishery workers.
Iceland uses individual transferable quotas, meaning, among other things, that fish is not a common property resource. It is run as a professional business.
Here's a interesting set of slides comparing the two fisheries. Note, for example, that Icelanders have reduced the number of the people in the fishery. They started around 1900, i.e. 105 years ago. They also don't restrict fish processing - hence there would be no ability for the provincial government to fiddle around in the marketplace, a la FPI.
Notice as well that Iceland is experiencing heavy out-migration but there the government does not treat this as a national calamity meaning that the government spends billions holding people in low-wage poverty.
For a perspective a little closer to home, here's a piece from The Navigator, from 1999. It's short but worth the read.
An while you're at it, here's a comparison of Newfoundland, Iceland, and Norway co-written by three economists. One of them, Bill Shrank teaches economics at Memorial.
I dare any politician to follow the genuinely new approach to the fishery as practiced in Iceland for the past century.
In the meantime don't hold your breath waiting for Highgrade Etchegary to call an open line show and tell it like it is.
