Transparency and Taking Control of the Merchants that Controlled our Family Since John Cabot
Just to be transparent and clear on my motives. My only goal is to cap our new boat at the 3 licences it’s allowed over the next 8 years so my kids have the same right as John and Jane Dos got in the larger fleet. I was forced out of the program in 2008 but I persevered and stayed fishing anyway and now I am a certified Fishing Master that paid for it out of my own pocket rather than depending on government funding to do it. That don’t make me less of a Professional Fish Harvester or less of a Fishing Master.
If my kids can play on the same Junior hockey team as theirs, they are going to have the same right to hold a career outside the fishery and fish our family’s boat and carry on our family’s legacy as their kids will have and they won’t have to be controlled by a merchant. They will be independently owned just like me and they will control the merchants that held our family captive since John Cabot.
These people in the large boats that are buying all of the inshore licenses from my family are great people to and they build their family and the offshore just like we should be allowed to do with the inshore. They are just taking advantage of low hanging fruit and buying our licences to expand their own enterprises based on rules that a handful chose to design in their favour. The licence that cost them 500k cash is costing the poor kid that come from nothing and persevered for 5 years to get their level 2 double that with financing and interest and to top it off they have to depend on a processor to help them with it because they are being made to become unemployed so no regular financial institution will look at them.
I grew up helping the underdog and facing the Bully so they don’t scare me today either. When the Bully beats the underdog, it’s expected but when the underdog beats the bully they stop being a Bully. Thier only answer to not continuing to be controlled Is to get out of the abusive relationship because living on False promises don’t stop the abuse.
Ryan Everard (Certified Fishing Master)
Shipper <40’ fleet.
Petty Harbour Nl
709 689 7399.
The professional fish harvester certification board are fully aware of the issue we are having and they are failing to address it in light of committing to the provincial government that they will. In the next decade we will have a shortage of over 4800 fish harvesters and the majority of our license holders are over 55 years of age and less than 20% of the people eligible to replace them are under 45. On the outside the fishery looks thriving in Petty Harbour but in reality we only have one person left under 40 eligible to hold a licence and none of our crew members can advance because of this discriminate rule that is destroying the small boat fishery and their own apprenticeship program. In the last 26 years they turned away 80% of new entrance and didn’t care enough to capture why. In 20 years it’s inevitable that the small boat fishery will become extinct in Petty Harbour, and many other communities just like mine. The certification board and provincial government are calling it rationalization and telling me a Petty Harbour isn’t a rural fishing community because we are so close to the capital city of St Johns. I beg to differ because we are the most rural representation that there is because our fleet is comprised solely of vessels less than 40 feet in overall length just like 75% of the enterprises across the province, the larger fleets are the minority, but they have the majority of the product. This isn’t a knock against the larger fleets because they are great people as well and they face struggles just like us but financially we live in two separate worlds, The government and the professional fish harvester certification board intentionally apply rules that are meant to divide us so it’s easier for rationalization to run its course. Today its the less than 40 foot fleet, tomorrow it will be the middle distance, and shortly after that it will be the 65 to 90 fleet and then our fishery is corporate owned. Counter-intuitively the executive Director of the certification board recently and independently addressed the house of assembly and the Senate of Canada to express extreme concerns over allowing those in the app apprenticeship program to graduate without becoming temporarily unemployed. The only logical answer to their actions is to intentionally make us depend on the processors for financial backing to support rationalization and wipe out the small boat fishery, and rural communities all across the province. If you find this concerning as well, please reach out to our Federal and Provincial Fisheries Minister and express your concerns.
Thank you, Ryan for submitting the article, and more, the deeper description of the issues the small boat fishermen are facing, as corporate consolidation.of fisheries continue, world wide in this comment. It clarifies so many underlying issues. BH