Inshore NL fishermen should play second fiddle to no one



I gave the following one-minute statement today (April 30th) in the House of Commons.

Mr. Speaker,

Yet another commercial fish stock off the East Coast is in trouble.

The quota for northern shrimp will be cut this year by 30 per cent.

That’s a lot of grief, which this Conservative government has chosen to inflict on the inshore fishermen of Newfoundland and Labrador, on our processing plants, on our outports.

Who’ve had MORE than their share of grief.

This government has decided to follow the so-called Last in, First out policy that favours big business offshore licence holders.

This is not about conservation or economics.

It is about blatantly serving the top of the food chain at the expense of our fishermen.

The principle of adjacency whereby those closest to the resource benefit from the resource has been tossed overboard.

The Last-in, First-out policy should only work for this government and the cabinet ministers on the Conservative front bench.

Our inshore fishermen who’ve cast their nets outside their front doors for 500 years should be at the front of the line.

They should play second fiddle to no one.

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