Rules around fishing licences, cabinet ministers ‘frustrating’ for PC MLA

PC MLA Sidney MacEwen said he watched nine of his colleagues sworn in as cabinet ministers in Georgetown yesterday with mixed emotions. MacEwen believes he and fellow PC MLA Colin LaVie faced an unfair — though perhaps not insurmountable — obstacle barring their way from cabinet: the two are fishermen. P.E.I.’s Conflict of Interest Act requires cabinet ministers put their business holdings in a blind trust. MacEwen said he spoke to P.E.I.’s conflict of interest commissioner and was told he would be in compliance if he put the corporation under which he owns his lobster licence into a blind trust. The problem, MacEwen said, is with DFO’s owner-operator policy, which dictates the person who owns a fishing licence has to be the one who fishes under it. >click to read<12:13

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