Minister Criticizes Groundfish Program

Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister Keith Colwell today called the federal government's licence retirement program a missed opportunity and predicted it will achieve only a small percentage of what the same amount of money could have done.

"The lack of flexibility in the program guarantees that it will not take the number of licences out of the fishery that it could have," said Mr. Colwell. "It also further illustrates that the federal departments involved in designing the program paid little or no attention to input from the fishing industry or provincial governments."

In Scotia Fundy, an industry committee was established to determine criteria for the program and an evaluation system for applications, while in Gulf Nova Scotia, a fleet management board did equally valuable work.

"These groups did an incredible job in coming to consensus on meaningful options for licence retirement for Nova Scotia, only to be ignored by Ottawa," said Mr. Colwell. "By coming out with a program that involves only permanent exit from the fishery, costs of obtaining licences will be much higher than what would have taken place in a more flexible or tiered system.

The Scotia Fundy industry proposed options including a low set rate for groundfish licences and a number of reverse auction choices. Fishermen could choose to sell groundfish licences only and fish their other licences, sell back groundfish licences while agreeing to dispose of all other licences, or permanently exit, including relinquishing their personal fisherman's registration.

Mr. Colwell maintained that many fishermen would have given up their groundfish licences for small amounts of money and continued in other fisheries like lobstering. Others would have disposed of everything but their personal fishermen's registration, which would have allowed them to work as crew members. Some would have opted for permanent exit, the only option that currently exists.

"It is disheartening that some flexibility was not incorporated into the licence retirement program given all the meetings, thought and work that went into what industry and the province believed to be a consultation process."

Concluded Mr. Colwell: "It is clear that little was learned from the earlier buyback program, which made little difference in the groundfish fishing capacity in Nova Scotia."