The right decision on shrimp #nlpoli

On the surface, it looks like a classic political compromise.  The federal government caved to political pressure and reallocated the shrimp quota to give more to the inshore sector.  But, they also lowered the shrimp quota by 42%, consist with the reduction in the stock since 2014.

Not surprisingly,  news of the quota reduction brought complaints from the fisheries union.  It remains, even without Earle McCurdy,  one of the most backward and reactionary agencies in the province. We have too many people in the industry chasing a dwindling resource but the fisheries union does not case about the sustainability of the industry.  The fisheries union and its political allies have no interest in reforming the industry into one that is sustainable and profitable for all those involved.

The Walking Dead #nlpoli

In China in these days of hard economic times, none are hit so hard as the people who work in zombie industries.

These are industries that keep producing despite there being no market for the product.  Like coal.  Or cement.  Or iron.

In most cases, the government steps in with fresh credit or other supports to keep the plants going and keep workers employed rather than close them down.

Province abandons fisheries policy…quietly #nlpoli

Two years.

That’s all it took to destroy the provincial government’s historic fisheries policy that had been built on the highly successful state-controlled model pioneered by such economic powerhouses as the Soviet Union, Albania, and North Korea.

Navigator Online #nlpoli

Turn your browser to a new blog from The Navigator. 

For those who don’t know it, The Navigator is a monthly magazine about the fishery for people in the industry in Atlantic Canada and the northeastern United States.

The Skipper’s Blog is written by managing editor Jaime Baker, late of the Telegram and the Fish, Food and Allied Workers’ Union. The subject matter for blog posts will likely be some aspect of the fishery but as Jaime told SRBP on Thursday, it could include other issues.  One post this week was about the young boy who offered his soccer medal to the Canadian men’s relay team.

Jamie’s most recent post is about a story this week about a resurgence in cod stocks:

While many outside the fishery may not have moved on from cod after the moratorium, the fishermen and the industry certainly did.

Last year’s $1 billion fishery was built largely on crab and shrimp. Believe it or not, a resurgence in cod right now to historic levels would actually throw a bit of a monkey-wrench into that industry.

How? Two ways.

One, cod are voracious predators and they tend to eat things like shrimp and juvenile crab (and anything else that is around). Most fishermen will tell you, in places where the cod are scarce, the shellfish tend to do well; and in places where the cod are plenty, the shellfish tend to not do well at all. And we should note there was very little in the way of crab or shrimp in this part of the world when the cod fishery was rocking out like The Who on speedballs. In fact, some scientists will tell you the fact that we have had crab and shrimp in these numbers is an anomaly.

His second point is that the local industry has re-oriented away from cod to the point where they’d have a hard time handling any sizable landings.

Other than maybe on the fisheries broadcast, that likely isn’t the sort of stuff you’ve been hearing.  Check out Jaime’s blog:  the opinions are both frank and well-informed.

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Patronage and seals… #nlpoli

Thursday’s announcement by fisheries minister Darin King should give you a pretty big reminder that the local political scene remains mired in the past.

The provincial government is giving a private sector company a $3.6 million.  They are calling it a loan.  In effect, the provincial government is going to pay a cash subsidy directly to fishermen to kill twice as many seals as the company involved could buy. That’s according to a company official at the news conference on Thursday. 

Interestingly enough, this is exactly the type of subsidy that helped to decimate the cod stocks since it encourages fishermen to over-harvest the resource.  The excuse for it is much the same as well:  it is supposedly just bridge financing to help the industry get through some difficult times now. Things will get better in the future.

There’s no truth in it of course.  There never has been.  Those are just the official excuses the politicians need to avoid the decisions that are tough but that would actually improve the fishery.

Even more interestingly, there’s a growing international effort to wipe out these subsidies. Yet while people around the world are trying to change the behaviour that led to the loss of our fish stocks, the locals are just carrying on as if everything was just peachy.

This looming change in the fishery and the fish markets is part of the story behind the more recent fisheries crisis, by the way, but that’s another issue. 

One sentence in the seal subsidy release leaped out.  it’s down towards the bottom. It’s vague and written in the passive voice, which likely means the person who wrote the release was just filling up space.  Here’s the claim:

The value of the industry to the provincial economy has been estimated at close to $100 million in total in recent years.

“has been estimated”.

By whom?

Well certainly not the provincial government.  The fisheries department website gives information for three years.  They are from a time before the most recent collapse of the markets:

The Sealing Industry contributed on average approximately $16 million to harvester’s income, and approximately $37 million to the provincial economy in the last three years:

• 2006: approximately $30 million in landed value and approximately $55 million to the provincial economy.
• 2007: approximately $11 million in landed value and approximately $32 million to the provincial economy.
• 2008: approximately $7 million in landed value and approximately $24 million to the provincial economy.

From $30 million in landed value and $55 million in total in 2006 to a mere $7.0 million in landed value and $24 million total value two years later.

So $100 million in total value to the economy?  Only, if you add up a bunch of years and that doesn’t seem to be what they meant.

This province won’t have a viable, local fishing industry in the future as long as the provincial government sticks with bad policy ideas like doling out cash to fishermen and local companies as they did in the seal announcement on Thursday.

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The fishery of the future, DFO version #nlpoli #cdnpoli

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is holding a consultation on the future direction of the commercial fishery in Canada. it builds off the sustainable fisheries framework announced in 2009.

Click on the picture to head off to the part of the website where you can leave your comments online.

Here’s how the DFO website describes it:

Canada is blessed to be rich in natural resources, including the longest coastline in the world. It is estimated that 80,000 Canadians make their livings directly from fishing and fishing related activities.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada is committed to supporting the economic profitability of those fisheries, while striving to ensure that fish stocks are healthy and abundant for future generations. The Department is modernizing the way it does business to enable the industry to address both current and future challenges. This will ultimately lead to fisheries that are more sustainable, more profitable and more globally competitive for the long term. Fisheries and Oceans Canada has already taken some important steps after considering feedback from industry, Aboriginal groups and others. But more needs to be done.

The Department is talking with Aboriginal groups, the fishing industry, non-governmental organizations and fisheries experts, as well as the Canadian public. We recognize the importance of transparency as we move forward with specific elements of fisheries management modernization. We also appreciate the value that diverse perspectives can bring to the development of these policies. Together, we will build a path towards a more sustainable, stable and economically prosperous fishing industry.

There’s also a consultation document [pdf] that lays out the basis for the discussion.  You can also find the bits of it and some presentations broken down for easier reading online at the DFO website:  here.

This will get you started.  Your humble e-scribbler will be looking at some specific aspects of this consultation over the next week or so as well as on some of the other issues that people in this province should be addressing but aren’t.

A warning:  if you think that this set of 1980s solutions to 1970s problems from the last provincial election represents the cutting edge of fisheries policy for the 21st century, you will probably not be too comfortable reading any of this stuff.

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Get politics out of fishery: report #nlpoli

A strange as it may seem after years of evidence that political interference in fisheries management has caused nothing but grief, there are still people – all politicians – who think the answer is yet more political interference.

Expect all of them to be out in force responding to this fisheries report because it appears to criticise only federal politicians.  The usual band will be pointing fingers and proclaiming ‘Aha!”.  But make no mistake:  they stand steadfastly for more political interference in the fishery.

You know who they are.  you know because you have heard them on open line shows and the Fisheries broadcast.

The Royal Society of Canada report is on the mark.  If Gus and Phil will take a chance to let this sink in, they’ll know why cod stocks remain in dismal shape:

“But the re-openings took place at the discretion of the minister. They were not based on science, they were not based on an overall recovery plan consistent with our national and international obligations,” Hutchings said.

And all those discretionary re-openings came from the plaintiff bleating of the voices in this province who insisted that the scientists knew nothing, fishermen knew better, there were a few fish in the bays and people should be left to get them while they could.

If Climb-down Cleary wanted to do something constructive about the fishery and the people who depend on it for a living, he’d ditch the sealskin bowtie, stop making a complete arse of himself and push for fisheries management based on scientific principles.

No one should hold their breath for that. Buffoonery from the backmost bench is still too fashionable.

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Bad sign #nlpoli #cdnpoli

The basic problem in the fishery is that the provincial fisheries minister has too much control over the industry and  - inevitably - tends to use it all for political purposes rather than for the good of the industry.

So fisheries minister Darin King’s answer to the current mess in the industry is to go looking for more power for the fisheries minister.

Nothing good can come of that.

Nothing.

But it also shows just how fundamentally screwed up things are.

Oh yes, and you can’t slide a sheet of paper between the parties on their fisheries policy. King’s latest idea is straight out of the same worn-out playbook the provincial Liberals pushed in the last election. And it’s the same as the bullshit the NDP is pushing with their claim that the problem is corporate greed.

Damn fool ideas from the lot of them.

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A familiar, fishy tale #nlpoli

Scientists told some American fishermen before Christmas that the cod the fishermen depend on for their livelihood are in danger of disappearing unless the fishermen change their ways.

Frig off, say the fishermen.

People from this province will recognise the drama.  Evidence says one thing.  A whole bunch of people deny it.

The drama continues to this day in Newfoundland and Labrador as the same people who have fought steadfastly against reforming the fishery continue their struggle.

You can spot the denial experts because they all got sucked in by a news release from the fisheries department last week. ‘Ocean Choice International Denied Permanent Redfish Exemption” screamed the headline.  Hooray, screamed the Deniers.  That’ll teach the Latest Evil Ones that they cannot pull a fast one.

Yes folks, there is no crisis.

It’s all just made up.

Now of course, the provincial government won’t grant a permanent exemption.  The fisheries minister and his colleagues are still in denial about the scope of the fisheries crisis and the need for dramatic change.

But in a few weeks time, Darin King will have to do something.  Odds are he will give OCI what it really wants, namely the end of restrictions on its processing licenses that force the company to process fish in this province even if it isn’t profitable to do so.

They won‘t be permanent exemptions.

But they company will get exemptions.

The reason is right there in the release:

“Yesterday we learned that OCI intends to proceed with plans to fish redfish from quotas purchased from license holders in Nova Scotia. The company has said if we provide an exemption, they will land the fish in Newfoundland and Labrador, otherwise it would be landed elsewhere.”

Then you put that with King’s guiding principles, as reported by the Telegram:

… no [provincial] government subsidies for the fishery, and making moves that maximize the benefit of the resource for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

King is just pretending because he is politically jammed up.  He gets praised today but in a few days or weeks, the same people will be attacking him.

Denying reality is a familiar, fishy tale whether you are in New England or Newfoundland.

The only difference is how long it takes for reality to take hold.

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The Wheel of Fish #nlpoli

Remember that thing about not being able to slide a sheet of paper between the three political parties on major issues?

Well, it continues to play out on the fishery.

Ocean Choice International announced on Friday it is closing a couple of plants that have been struggling for some time.

The provincial government  - via Premier Kathy Dunderdale  - blames the union for rejecting an offer to keep a couple of hundred people on the payroll long enough every year to qualify for federal hand-outs.

The latest fisheries minister repeats the government’s policy that fights against any reorganization of a fishery that everyone knows has too many people and way too many plants in it for anyone to make a decent living without government handouts. 

He threatens to hold up a decision on OCI’s export licenses unless the company delivers guarantees that the company will not close other plants.

The Liberals blame the Tories.  Bring out the “regulatory arsenal”, the Liberal news release screams, in order to to stop ”giveaways”.  Now there’s a novel idea:  politicians interfering in the fishery. What was the definition of stupid, again? 

The union-controlled New Democrats blame the company and province’s governing Tories for the mess.  What would they support?  Something that involves more government interference in the fishery which is, not surprisingly what both the Liberals and the Conservatives think is the right and new thing to do. 

And around and around the political merry-go-round spins, apparently, without any sense of the human tragedy caused by decades of exactly the same ideas they push as if no one has heard them before.

All three parties pretend that the central problem in the fishery doesn’t exist.  “The central problem of the fishery today”, as your humble e-scribbler wrote in September, “is that stocks have been decimated by decades of overfishing as a result of government policies that encouraged too many people to enter the fishery than it could sustain economically or environmentally without hundreds of millions annually in federal and provincial government subsidies.”

The Liberal release, in keeping with the party’s election platform, might actually be the stupidest position of the three parties.  But in fairness, they are mere millimetres beyond the Conservatives and the New Democrats on the stunned-arse scale.

Derek Butler is executive director of an association of fish processing companies.  In the Monday Telegram, Butler argues that only “change and a modern competitive fishery designed to perform to the market can work.”  He’s right.

But that is exactly the fishery that the politicians have fought against for decades.  The politicians had a choice.  They could manage the change or just let it happen. The former offered the chance of stability, order and control.  The latter could wind up being brutal and savage with an unpredictable outcome.  One is a jaunt; the other a  manic storm of motion and fury.

Well, with OCI’s decision last week, they don’t have a choice any more. 

Their merry-go-round ride just turned into a roller coaster without seatbelts or rails.

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Related:

• “And no fish swam…”
• “Quiet:  Genius at Work”
• “Up the Creek with Jackman and Rideout”

And so it begins (fishery restructuring version) #nlpoli #cdnpoli

News today that OCI will permanently close two of its fish plants is merely the start of it.

The hurricane of change that is sure to follow will make the 1992 cod moratorium seem like a gentle breeze.

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Good to the last vote: NDP paints own caricature #nlpoli

Your humble e-scribbler said it most recently just a few days ago:

The two opposition parties are less concerned about the financial costs.  Instead they are making the most of sounding like they want to do something while at the same time advocating more and more spending to prop up this bit of the industry or that bit.

The province’s New Democrats unveiled their fisheries policy on Thursday.  It calls for increased government intervention in the fishery and an essentially open-ended commitment to public spending to keep plants open that are no longer financially viable or that are having problems due to excessive government intervention in the fishery already.

Here are some choice bits from the very brief NDP news release:

[NDP leader Lorraine] Michael says government must immediately reopen the plant [at Marystown] while the audit is going on, giving workers more employment.

The NDP wants the federal government to help fund the scheme in a perversion of the Employment Insurance system that looks more like make work than not:

In addition to demanding the immediate reopening of the plant, today the NDP is calling for the redirection of traditional Job Creation Partnership-type programs into the plant to ensure long term employment for fish plant workers.

And if that wasn’t enough, the New Democrats want to increase the government role in the fishery even more:

Michael also noted that since the plant is currently closed, the redfish concession given to OCI, which was agreed to by plant workers in order keep the plant open, should be revoked until the plant is reopened.

Now everyone should know that this specific release is aimed at a seat the NDP thinks they can win.  But the principle behind it is exactly what your humble e-scribbler predicted.  The NDP want to continue the Frankenstein experiment in social engineering begun decades ago with a return to the worst of the policies that helped create the current mess in the first place.

You couldn’t write a better parody of an NDP fisheries policy if you tried.

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Building the fishery of the future

To look at the fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador is to see as clear an example as one may find of the fundamental bankruptcy of the sort of old-fashioned politics that has existed from the earliest of times and that persists right down to modern day Ottawa.

It is not business, as your humble e-scribbler has said before, as much as it is a Frankenstein experiment in social engineering.  Politician after politician after politician has used the fishery for his own political gain. The fishery is the heart and soul of the province, we are told.  Mention fishing and you will find politicians eager to display their passion to rise to its defence against all manner of assailants, most of them entirely fictional.

Is there fundamentally any difference between John Efford, say, and Ryan Cleary? 

Absolutely not.

Cleary with his crusade to find out what happened to the fish is merely the latest version of the old blow-hard Newfoundland politician.  Cleary’s already mounted his ass and headed off to find the missing fish.  If by some miracle, Cleary gets the crowd in Ottawa to fund the junket-commission he wants, he will look, inevitably, in all the places where the information isn’t.  If he doesn’t get the cash – as he won’t – Cleary will claim this is yet another example of Canadian exploitation of the poor benighted fisher folk who form the moral core of a long-suffering society blah blah blah blah.

Either way, Cleary will garner  column inch after sound bite from reporters at home who are always ready to spew the bullshit to the punters or from mainland scribes hard up for copy and who know as much about the eastern-most part of Canada as the average Hmong tribesman does and seem to care even less.

Passion is their thing.  After an early embarrassment and dismissal from cabinet, John Efford rebuilt his political profile as a fisheries crusader who was as full of it as Cleary is, or Tom Rideout or any of a dozen others.

For politicians, all this will be good to the last fish. Kathy Dunderdale is vowing to step into the latest problem at the Marystown plant so that fish are processed in the province and not sent outside where they can be turned into food or some such far more cost-effectively than they can be handled in places like Marystown. 

This is the same problem, incidentally, that Fishery Products International had with the same species and the same plant on a few years ago.  Kath should recall.  She and her colleagues decided the way to handle that was to smash FPI to bits.  The lucrative bits went to foreigners.  The headquarters building changed hands a couple of times within a year and now houses some lovely provincial government tenants. The other bits wound up going to Ocean Choice, the Torily-connected fish processing company that is now experiencing some sort of karmic retribution. 

What goes around, comes around, apparently and in a small province, it seems to pick up speed on the return trip.

So firmly entrenched is the political desire to interfere in the fishery that the current fisheries minister is refusing to accept a dramatic proposal from the fishermen and the processors to do the sorts of things people have been saying they needed to do for years. 

The current provincial government’s decision only further emphasises the extent to which the fishery is controlled by people who have no business in the business.

The solution is to turn control of the industry over to the only people who can decide for themselves how best to run it:  processors and harvesters.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the first bold proposal to reform the fishery is for the provincial government to accept the recent fisheries reform proposal without further delay.

The second idea is to eliminate all subsidies to the industry within two years. They drain the provincial treasury and serve only to prop up businesses that otherwise wouldn’t make it.

The third idea is for the provincial government to abolish processing licenses with the elaborate red tape restrictions that go with it.  The current system helps to keep too many people and too many plants working in an industry featuring low wages, limited capital for investment and with no prospect that new workers will enter the industry to keep it going.

Instead, license processors as businesses under occupational health and safety rules or anything similar legislation. Beyond that?  Nothing. Let processors open plants, close plants or reorganize plants as they see fit based on the business’ finances.  If a plant goes bust, then it goes bust. 

The end result will be fewer plants but fewer plants is exactly what the industry needs.  Where those plants will be and how many that will exist are not things anybody can or should predict.  What will emerge at the end of the change will be stronger companies that are more likely to survive in a highly competitive global market.  In the end there might only be one big company – looking, not surprisingly like FPI – and a bunch of small niche companies.  There could be a couple of bigger, integrated operations but the people in the industry will be able to make a decent living from their work and their industry will be more attractive than the current mess is.

Fish harvesting also needs an overhaul.

The fourth idea is to establish a system of fish auctions using internationally recognised grading systems would improve quality and the cash that fishermen get for their landings.

Processors from any province would be required to bid for landings at the auction sites in a daily competition. Alternately, processors could operate their own fleets or make supply contracts with harvesters.  The two systems could operate side-by-side but harvesters would have a choice. 

Increased competition would also ensure they wouldn’t be victimised in a system like the old one where they had no choice but sell to the handful of locals in a closed system. It would also give fishermen greater control over their own individual operations.

Changes to the harvesting side of the industry will need federal involvement, but federal politicians and bureaucrats would have good reason to support a system that reduces the political and financial headaches of the current system.

Fish harvesting businesses would also profit by the fifth idea, the elimination of the byzantine system of gear restrictions and vessel size restrictions that serve no useful purpose in a modern industry that is run as an industry. “Buddying-up”  - having several licenses on one boat – is an example of how people in the industry are already trying to make sensible changes to meet the economic pressures of the industry.  They are limited in how far they can go, however, by the inertia that keeps in place a system of rules that may have worked decades ago but that simply make no sense any more.

Something that may have worked once but that no longer makes any sense:  that is really the tale of the entire fishing industry in Newfoundland and Labrador, if not all of Atlantic Canada.

To build the fishery of the future, we have to let go of ideas that simply make no sense any more.

We must turn the industry over to the people who are trying to make a living in it.

They know best what to do.

We just need to give them a chance.

- srbp -

Updated Bonus Idea: Dismantling the Stalinist provincial bureaucracy that is stifling the fishery at the provincial level will allow the fisheries department to focus on new priorities. 

The biggest of these would be encouraging aquaculture .

The next biggest would helping to promote a new identity for local seafood based on quality.  This would be a key part of ensuring the future fishery is internationally competitive.

Association of Seafood Producers responds to Jackman

Below you’ll find the complete text of a statement issued Tuesday by the Association of Seafood Producers.

Key bits:

• ASP clearly supports the process that led to the report and the report itself, describing Tom Clift’s work as “a comprehensive analysis of the predicament facing the industry” and as something that lay the groundwork for “a planned landing”
• By refusing to take the report to cabinet, fisheries minister Clyde Jackman is apparently breaking one of government’s commitments in the memorandum of understanding.
• The processors were looking for government assistance in securing a loan to help pay for the industry down-sizing, not a simple request for cash as the fisheries minister suggested.

:

You an find the Telegram’s online story here.

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MOU PIFO

A classic Telegram editorial, your humble e-scribbler once wrote, consists of a summary of an issue concluding with a blinding insight into the completely frigging obvious.

Such is the Saturday Telegram offering, this time on the latest fisheries report unveiled and summarily rejected on Friday by fisheries minister Clyde Jackman:

Something has to be done. It may end up being a half-measure, or even less.  But the sheer size of the problem is now abundantly clear.  And for the industry, it has to be terrifying.

Four phrases.

Four penetrating insights into what is obvious to even the most casual observer of the fishery over the past 30 years.

That closing paragraph is right up there with Clyde Jackman’s claim on Friday that the MOU process was not a waste as everyone now had a detailed description of how bad things are.

Who didn’t know that already?

Well, besides Clyde Jackman, evidently. 

To be fair to both Jackman and the Telegram editorialist, though, they really are just a reflection of the fundamental problem that has plagued the fishery in this province since 1949.  People know what needs to be done to turn the fishery into an industry that is sustainable and relatively prosperous.  People in the current cabinet know.  People in past cabinets have known. Those who know and who are willing to do it are hampered by those who know nothing and others who vigorously oppose any changes at all. 

In the meantime, the only people suffering are the people in the industry.  Eventually time will take care of them.  Clyde Jackman kept mentioning that last Friday.  He really didn’t need to.

Everyone knows it.

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Jackman runs from fisheries restructure report

Fisheries minister Clyde Jackman is running as fast as he can from a fisheries restructuring report that recommends restructuring the fishery.

This is not a surprise for a minister who appeared clueless on the issues in his own portfolio when he admitted first receiving the report.

This is not a surprise given that the current administration like pretty well all its predecessors of  either blue or red persuasion have run from meaningful fisheries reform as fast as their little legs could carry them.

The only change in the past year seems to be that the industry has gone from midway up sh**t creek to being pretty close to the headwaters.

Bottom line:  we are still in an election year with a Tory leadership out there waiting to get settled afterward.  No politician of any political stripe is going to advocate what needs to happen (the report would be a good starting point) under either of those circumstances. And for the Tories in power, they have a double reason to stay as short-sighted as they can.

Anyone still wonder why Danny left in such a gigantic hurry?

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Fisheries agreement delayed again

Did anyone really expect that fisheries minister Clyde Jackman would actually tell the people of the province officially, with a news release that the long-awaited fisheries restructuring agreement would be delayed yet again?

Good because he didn’t.

Instead, Jackman dropped a comment to the Northern Pen, a weekly paper on the province’s Northern Peninsula.

A draft copy of Newfoundland and Labrador’s fishing industry MOU has been sent back for fine tuning delaying its release by another “two or three months”.

Speaking to the Pen on Monday, fisheries minister Clyde Jackman confirmed that he had read the 100-page document but it required some tweaking.

And if the rest of Jackman’s comments are any indication there’s no wonder the fishery is in a mess.  The fish minister doesn’t even have a sweet clue about incomes in his own industry:

One thing that really stood out was the difference in incomes for the different parties,” he said.

“In some places you have plant workers earning $10,000 and supplemented by EI while in others, they make multi thousands of dollars.”

The smart-arses can ignore the fact that ten thousand is multi-thousands.  Just note that those sorts of figures can be found readily in a report on the crab industry contained in a report government received back when Trevor Taylor was the fisheries minister.

Meanwhile, the province’s official opposition party did manage to get the story some wider coverage than Jackman may have liked.  A news release the Liberals issued did get picked up by the major media in St. John’s, likely much to Jackman’s chagrin:

“What that really means is that the plan is dead for the next year,” said [fisheries critic Marshall] Dean. “By taking another two to three months to ‘fine tune’ it, Jackman is removing the MOU from any consideration of funding in the next provincial budget, which is expected in March. If there is no funding for the plan in the budget, nothing can happen with the plan until the following year’s budget in 2012. That’s a full six months after this coming fall’s provincial general election. It looks like Minister Jackman has finally found a way to ground the MOU until after the election.”

Given this government’s handling of the MOU – which has now taken four years and gone through three different fisheries ministers – Dean thinks there is no will on the part of the PCs to deal with the fishery at all.

The story also wound up on CBC’s Fisheries Broadcast.

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Related

-   Good to the last fish:

At the same time, there are still thousands of people in Newfoundland and Labrador trying to squeeze a very meagre living from processing fish for a few weeks a year and then collecting government hand-outs for the rest.  A report delivered to the current administration when it was still young pointed out that the typical fish plant worker made less than $10,000 a year from labour, picking up another $5,000 in employment insurance premiums.

There are still way too many of them – plants and plant workers – for them all to make a decent living from what fish, and now snails, there is to turn into frozen blocks. The only thing that has changed in the better part of a decade since that report is that the workers are finding it harder and harder to collect enough weeks of work to qualify for the EI.

-  Tom Rideout meets the Bride of Frankenstein

-  Up the creek with Jackman and Rideout

Tom Rideout meets the Bride of Frankenstein

Anyone who wants to understand the reason why the fishery in this province remains an economic and social disaster need look no further than recent comments by the former Premier and former fisheries minister who had not one but two kicks at the portfolio.

Tom Rideout spoke to a young audience in Corner Brook the other day. As the Western Star reports it, Rideout gave only two options for the future:

One option is to let the private sector take over the industry — whereby non-profitable plants will eventually close and licences will lapse, solving the problem of over-processing capacity.

“It will be messy, but it will solve the problem,” he said.

However, as the past has shown, he said, whenever a processor closes a plant, often another group will claim they are able to do it better.

“The communities get together, their political leadership get together, they demand the licence be transferred, the new operator limps on from one crisis to another, and the communities continue to what I would call a slow march to their own death,” he said.

The second option is for government to buy out processors in geographically defined regions of the province. He said there are many employment opportunities on the Avalon Peninsula, that the plants in these areas can be be more easily closed and these areas could survive.

By his own version, Rideout served as fisheries minister in the 1980s –at a time of supposed boom – and then served in the same job about 20 years later, at a time when things were much worse.  Rideout’s version of that in-between time [CBC audio link] is, to put it generously, a bit self-serving.  For the moment, however, let us stick with Rideout’s version of events in the 1980s and then the later bit within the past few years.

During Tom Rideout’s tenure as fisheries minister in the 1980s, the fishery was in the early stages of a decline that led, ultimately to the 1992 cod fish collapse.  The policies at both the provincial and federal level encouraged people to fish anything and everything that could be caught.  The boom, as Rideout sees it, was entirely a time of artificial plenty brought about by policies that contributed significantly to the 1992 collapse. Things looked good but anyone who wanted to see could tell things were bad.

If we did not know this from other comments, as we do, we know that the fishery was in a very difficult state because Rideout tells us that in his interview with CBC.  Someone else can ask why it is that Rideout at one time claims things were great when he was minister and at the same time acknowledges the arse was pretty much out of ‘er at the same time. 

Suffice it to say that Rideout’s appreciation of his original tenure, therefore is superficial, at best.  He apparently has no grasp of what happened in the 1980s. he has some understanding of the basic  problem – too many people, too few fish – and the political dynamic that helped to create it in the 1980s when he was minister.  This is the same dynamic that took hold once again in the late 1990s when another fisheries minister did what Rideout and his cabinet colleagues did in the 1980s.

That is, they operated under the assumption that the provincial government must interfere in the fishery to a degree it does not do in other sectors of the economy.  You can see this in the way Rideout describes the two options, quoted above. In both, it is the provincial government that manages the fishery as it does now by controlling the issuance of licenses.

What Rideout describes as “letting the private sector take over” is, of course nothing of the sort. He is basically describing the situation that exists today.  That’s how he can then describe this part of the scenario:

“The communities get together, their political leadership get together, they demand the licence be transferred, the new operator limps on from one crisis to another, and the communities continue to what I would call a slow march to their own death…”.

If the fishery were left to run as a business, there would be no licenses to transfer based on political criteria.    A company could apply for a license to operate business and, so long as it met the same business regulations as all others, it would open. Licenses would be issued only on the basis of operating a business, not on the location of the plant, the type of fish or anything of the sort.  These are all artificial restrictions on business that reflect the very situation in the time Rideout was first the fisheries minister that created the political morass that continues today.

As long as the plant could make money it would stay open.  If it could not make money, then it would close.  Period.  Rideout is apparently concerned about workers.  Well, undoubtedly some bright people could figure out how to deal with that just as bright people in other industries do now.

That is what would happen if the fishery were run as any other type of industry.  And incidentally, the fishery department would comprise a few officials in another department of food related industry or something of the sort.  A small fishery department would be nothing but a reflection that government finally got out of the Frankenstein experiment in social engineering Rideout  - and a great many others - helped run.

Rideout’s second scenario is nothing more than a dolled up version of the first, but with a much greater financial burden for ordinary taxpayers in the province.

In short, whatever Tom Rideout told that young and impressionable audience in Corner Brook a couple of days ago, he showed them how persistent is the thinking that created the mess in the fishery and that continues to torture the men and women of the province today with the same blinkered thinking.

Rideout is right about one thing though, aside from his admission that like the rest of us he has made mistakes.  Rideout is right that nothing of any consequence will happen as long as we are in this pre-election period.  We can add to it the pre-leadership period and then right after that, the next pre-election period. That is always what happens as long as politicians of a certain type want to play God in the fishery.

Until politicians decide to get themselves out of the fishing industry altogether, the people involved in the industry are doomed to live daily in reruns of the same social slasher film.

Update:  Here’s the CBC online version of Rideout’s comments.

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Related:

• Good to the last fish
• And it only took a year
• Up the creek with Jackman and Rideout

What’s happening?!!!

Well, in the world of provincial fisheries not much of any value to people in the fishing industry.

In July, the provincial government announced it would start spending cash duplicating scientific research on some fish stocks that was already being done elsewhere. “Study” is what some government’s do when they lack the political mojo to do something concrete. Nothing screams impotence like the July fish science announcement.

Somewhere along the line, the provincial fisheries department hired Fred Stubbs to handle media in the department.

Hence Friday’s announcement of an announcement previously announced.

And they will be studying a fish stock which is – in case someone missed the announcement in 1992 – under a fishing moratorium.

Odd they missed that little tidbit of information. 

It was in all the papers.

Anyway, there are two bits of actually useful information in this vacuous POS from the fish department:

First, we now have a date when the Irish will send us their boat.

Second, we also know of yet another junket to Ireland that produced nothing other than expenses that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador will have to cover.

There is a third thing, but that isn’t really in the release.  It’s what’s not in the release. The provincial government is going to spend bags of taxpayer cash to study cod, a species that is commercially extinct and that could easily become biologically extinct as well if we aren’t careful.

What isn’t in the release is a mention of species that people in this province depend on to earn a living and about which the scientific and commercial fishing community know relatively little.

Crab.

Shrimp.

Stuff like that.

If we are going to spend public money, surely we should be spending it to gather information we don’t have on fish stocks that are commercially important.

Hiring out-of-work Irish crews to study cod seems like a monumental waste of time.  Well a waste of time unless you want to distract attention away from the government’s complete impotence when it comes to fisheries issues that matter.

Someone check Clyde Jackman’s luggage and make sure he didn’t lose the memorandum of understanding file in some Galway motel.

That’s the last thing fishermen need.

Okay.

The last thing they need other than a $14 million study of northern cod.

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Edit:  removed question mark not needed.

Are you smarter than a cheese grater, now?

Remember that fisheries research cash announcement that seemed to have been cobbled together within the past six weeks?

Well, there’s a bit more evidence of the whole thing was baked up in a few weeks.  The evidence comes from the release of a consultation document to support development of a coastal and oceans management strategy by the provincial governments.

Environment minister Charlene Johnson is in the thick of it, once again, with this quote from the news release:

“Our oceans play a very valuable role in our ecosystems and it is important that we employ an appropriate policy framework for their management,”…

Charlene has an interest in and jurisdiction over the ocean.

Interesting.

In late May – about six weeks ago – she sure didn’t.

That’s because, according to Johnson, “if the Leader of the Opposition was so concerned about the environment and offshore she should have asked me a question where jurisdiction does fall under my department and that is when the oil reaches the land, Mr. Speaker.”

In that same session, natural resources minister Calamity Kathy Dunderdale went so far as to put a specific delimitation on where the shore began: the “Minister of Environment and Conservation … has no responsibility beyond the high water mark.”

Dunderdale – who is also Danny Williams’ hand-picked choice as second in command on the good ship Williams – also had no trouble defining where the fisheries minister stood:  his “did not go any further than that either as far as the offshore was concerned.”

How truly odd, then, that the other minister involved in the oceans strategy consultation was none other than Clyde Jackman, minister of fisheries and aquaculture.

Now we’ve already had more than a few chortles  at Dunderdale’s expense over this whole issue of jurisdiction. Okay so maybe there were a few guffaws too. But for an administration  whose deputy premier only a few weeks ago was adamant that  ministers had absolutely no responsibility for what went on below the high water mark on the shore, this new document is a gigantic change of direction.

All in six weeks.

But that’s not the end of it.

This new strategy is supposedly about…well, let’s let Charlene tell us:

“Our goal is sustainability and ensuring we use our resources effectively…”

Laudable stuff, indeed.

The word “sustainable” occurs no fewer than 36 times in the consultation document itself, usually in conjunction with the word “manner”, as in things must be done in a “sustainable manner”.

The responsibility for this sustainable stuff rests with none other than Charlene Johnson and her intrepid little department:

The Department of Environment and Conservation is responsible for developing and implementing the Sustainable Development Act, the Sustainable Development Strategy, and coordinating interdepartmental interests. It supports the Sustainable Development Roundtable, comprised of stakeholders from around the province, and
the development and monitoring of indicators to ensure development adheres to the principles of sustainability. (p.13)

Sustainable Development Act?

Yes, that would be the same piece of legislation that was part of the Tory campaign platform in 2003, passed into law in early 2007 but never implemented.

The roundtable?

Doesn’t exist, apparently.

And that sustainable development strategy?  Well, if the Act had been put into effect, then the whole thing would already exist. Instead, government is trotting out yet another consultation to develop yet another strategy on things which apparently are beyond its ministerial competence and all of this is being done before they bother to put into an effect a commitment made in 2003.

For those who are counting that is a total of seven years to get exactly nowhere.

The Sustainable Development Act required that cabinet approve a comprehensive strategic environment management plan for the whole province within two years of the Act coming into force.  In other words, if this Act had been put into effect the year it was passed, the entire province – including the fisheries related bits – would already have a plan.

And then five years after that, the whole thing would be reviewed again complete with public consultation.

To put it bluntly, had the current administration done what it committed to do in 2003 and what it finally got around to passing through the House of Assembly in 2007, this entire business and a whole lot more besides would already be done or well under way.

As it is, one has to wonder why the SDA remains in mothballs and why this  particular “consultation” appears now, out of the blue, and focuses – as it appears – on areas over which the provincial government has no legislative jurisdiction.

Taken together with Friday’s announcement, it looks a we bit curious if not downright suspicious.

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Related:

• “Your serial government at work” (2007)
• “To listen to old, archived messages, press 2…” (2006)
• “Res ipsa loquitur, once more” (2005)  a.k.a. “…and there shall be plans, and planning for plans and plans to co-ordinate the plans of the planning for plans…”