Tag Archives: Stephen Greene
The man who changed Canada’s lobster industry and his $1B deal to sell Clearwater
In Nova Scotia, John Risley is arguably a household name, synonymous with the seafood industry and his many conspicuous possessions. On both fronts, his reputation is well earned. In 1976, he and his brother-in-law Colin MacDonald started Clearwater, a dumpy retail lobster shop on the side of a suburban Halifax highway. From that simple start, Risley fundamentally changed the Atlantic Canadian lobster industry — transforming it from a seasonal, afterthought business to a year-round, $3-billion sector where lobsters are shipped overnight by air to customers in Europe and Asia, a premise unheard of before Risley entered the industry. Along the way, Clearwater matured into a global seafood company. >click to read< 07:43
Ottawa attacks fishermen
Finance Minister Bill Morneau sucker-punched Canadian business owners, and now Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc wants to finish fishermen off. Mr. Morneau’s attempted seizure of retirement savings held by small business owners, farmers, doctors and lawyers has already been well-documented. In a similar attack, Mr. LeBlanc is going after fishermen, many of whom have spent decades building retirement nest eggs from their investments in licences and vessels. While he’s at it, Leblanc is using the same kind of Orwellian double-speak, and engaging in the sort of sham consultative processes, that Mr. Morneau has attempted. In a speech this summer in Chester, Nova Scotia, Mr. LeBlanc said he wants to “bring our government’s support for the middle class to life through a progressive fisheries policy.” Sound familiar? click here to read the op-ed 11:12
