Canada’s fisheries minister says licences have become “over-valued” and he wants to work with the industry to do something about it.
During a speech Tuesday in Chester, N.S., Dominic LeBlanc said he’s interested in making the licensing process fairer and called on industry members to help him find a way.
“Fishing licenses have become over-valued in recent years, especially here in southwest Nova Scotia,” LeBlanc said in his speech, a copy of which was provided by his communications team.
In some cases, licences can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, with the only way around paying that cost usually being the ability for someone to transfer the licence to another person, such as a family member.
As fisheries such as lobster, crab and shrimp boom, the cost of a licence has soared. LeBlanc said those high upfront costs are excluding some people from the industry.
“A system where access to a fishing license is determined by who you’re related to or how many hundreds of thousands of dollars you have, or how much debt you are willing to take on, seems unfair,” said LeBlanc.
Melanie Sonnenberg, president of the Canadian Independent Fish Harvesters’ Federation, the group to whom the minister was speaking, said a huge issue for the industry has been finding ways to bridge the gap between an intergenerational transfer of a licence and people who have made major cash investments through the years to get into fishing.
It’s not a stretch to suggest some fishermen view their licence as a sort of pension because of what it can fetch when they sell it upon retiring.
Sonnenberg said government needs to be aware of and respect how hard people have worked to get to where they are and to maintain what they have. But she said there also need to be conversations about how difficult it is to get young people involved so they, too, can develop an enterprise and career.
There aren’t easy answers and it’s not going to happen quickly, she said.
“The fact is, we have to protect all parties and find ways to make this work for everybody,” said Sonnenberg.
The idea goes hand-in-hand with the other major component of LeBlanc’s speech on Tuesday, which was that he’d look for ways to enshrine owner-operator in law in an effort to preserve and protect small, community-based fishing operations from corporate takeover.
Sonnenberg called it a major announcement that’s been years in the making. But if the goal is to protect the owner-operator system, there also need to be owner-operators, she said. That means the conversation about licence prices must happen.
During his speech, LeBlanc seemed to indicate he knows how difficult a subject this will be.
“To say there will be divergent views is an understatement. I’m sure that there are people in this very room who will vehemently disagree with one another on licensing questions,” said LeBlanc.
The key will be including everyone in the discussion and making it clear the intent is not to harm anyone, but rather strengthen the overall industry, said Sonnenberg.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us and so does the department,” she said. “But I think we’re up to the task.”
2017 CBC/Radio-Canada