Tag Archives: NAFTA
Coastal Georgia Shrimping: A new season of uncertainty, possibilities and hope
In a word, “difficult,” said Dee Kicklighter of their most recent shrimping season. Kicklighter, who has worked with Mathews for about eight years, has seen first-hand how the unpredictability of the business can be costly. “You plan for something to be one price, and then the next week you come back, and it could be potentially thousands of dollars more, depending on what you’re dealing with,” he said of fluctuating prices, including fuel. Over the years, Mathews said the ever-changing cost of fuel has taken a toll on the number of shrimpers in the industry. It’s not just Georgia shrimpers contending with the negative effects from imports. North Carolina, Texas, Louisiana, Florida and other coastal states are also feeling the friction of narrowing profit margins that threaten their way of life. Photos, more, >>click to read<< 09:15
John Crosbie dead at 88. They broke the mould when they made John Crosbie, a politician like no other
John Crosbie, a firebrand of a politician who served in several federal cabinet portfolios and who played a dominant role in his beloved Newfoundland and Labrador for decades, has died.,, Chief among those was a stomach-churning decision to shut down the northern cod fishery off Newfoundland and Labrador in 1992, a decision that instantly put an estimated 30,000 people out of work and triggered what was called the single largest industrial layoff in Canadian history. >click to read< 07:26
They broke the mould when they made John Crosbie, a politician like no other – He was very smart, witty, opinionated, at times outrageous, sarcastic, chauvinistic, and contemptuous of those among his fellow politicians who got ahead by going with the flow. Crosbie was not a “going with the flow” sort. >click to read<
Have you had enough?
Since its inception in 1976, the agency charged with managing our fisheries, the NMFS, has overseen their decline, a decline which in most cases was a product of their own machinations.Usually most ideas the government has for managing our lives are well intended but terribly executed, this was a prime example. NMFS, for all that it was intended to be and do for our fisheries, has failed and in some cases, this wasn’t by mistake, but by design. By John Rice, >click to read< , and the comment venue is open there! 13:37
Amid uncertain NAFTA future, lobster industry looks to other markets
President Donald Trump is known to be a steak kind of guy. But his threat to throw out the North American Free Trade Agreement is lending a whole new meaning to “surf and turf” for at least one lobster-processing plant in southwestern Nova Scotia. “Yes, we all watch the negotiations. Yes, we’re all concerned about what will happen,” said Robert MacDonald, president and general manager of Gidney Fisheries in Centreville, N.S. The U.S. is the largest consumer of lobster from the Maritimes, accounting for close to three-quarters of the roughly $2 billion this country exported in 2016, according to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. click here to read the story 09:24
Canada’s opening stance for NAFTA talks: Common ground, not confrontation
The Canadian government is signalling the approach it intends to take should Donald Trump make good on his promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. is laying out some starting principles such as co-operation instead of confrontation. In a lengthy interview, David MacNaughton expressed his desire to see the countries propose common-ground, common-sense ideas that improve the old agreement instead of flinging out hardball demands that could produce deep, drama-filled bargaining. “We have done an extensive amount of work (to prepare for this),” MacNaughton said in the year-end interview. “We have a good sense of what would be in Canada’s interest…. “(But) the areas we need to focus on — and I think we are focusing on — is where is it not just in Canada’s interest, but in Canada and the United States’ interest… “I think if we’re just blatantly trying to push something that works for us but doesn’t work for them, that’s not going to be… quite as easy.” Read the rest here 17:41
We live, we’re often told, in a bold new era of transparency and openness. – Through a glass, darkly By Jason MacLean
So much so that businesses and governments are falling over themselves to demonstrate their commitment to this new, transcendent virtue. Read morechroniclejournal 11:17
Legal issues holding up fish-farming complaint to environmental commission
VANCOUVER – An effort by environmentalists, a First Nation and commercial fishermen to use a NAFTA side agreement to force Canada to change the way it polices British Columbia’s salmon farms has bogged down in legal arguments. The groups claim Ottawa is exposing wild salmon to sea lice, disease, toxic chemicals and concentrated waste. [email protected] 16:58
